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THE CAPE COD MYSTERY





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THE CAPE COD
MYSTERY
By
PHOEBE ATWOOD TAYLOR
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
INDIANAPOLIS
MJININTERIMIRIMINIMI10mmMMUNIRIIMIIMIINILI


COPYRIGHT, 1931
By PHOEBE ATWOOD TAYLOR
Printed in the United States of America
T2450
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO., INC.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.


O.P. BarLER
BE A HEY
4.ronto
All of the characters in this story, with
the exception of the cat, are fictitious.





CONTENTS
Chapter
Page
I The Week-End Begins
II A Quiet Evening at Home
III Mr. Sullivan Takes Hold
IV Bill and the Sardines
V Enter Asey Mayo
VI Complications
VII Dot Becomes Involved
VIII Sullivan Finds the Hammer
LX The Doctor and His Notes
X The Other Hammer Is Explained
XI At the Hermit's Hut
XII Mr. Abe Schonbrun
XIII Asey Traces the Sardines
XIV Kurth Finds His Car
XV Asey Gets Mysterious
XVI Maida Pays a Call
XVII Getting Down to Business
XVIII The Futile Summing Up
XIX Asey and the Blessed Hope
XX Mere Baggy-Tell
106
120
135
152
167
183
199
215
231
248
263
282
297
309





THE CAPE COD MYSTERY


The Cape Cod Mystery
CHAPTER I
THE WEEK-END BEGINS
“ 'HEAT wave hits East,'” Betsey read. “'Prostra-
tion record of all time. Mercury soaring. Well, that's
gone and torn our peaceful vacation, that has. By
to-night we'll have a stack of telegrams a yard high
from city-sizzling friends who want to get cooled off.”
I sighed a little. “I know," I said wearily. As a per-
ennial and thoroughly experienced summer cottager on
Cape Cod I sat back to await the inevitable deluge.
"You groan as though it were an earthquake or a flood
instead of a few visitors, Snoodles,” Betsey remarked.
Now my name is not Snoodles, but Prudence Whitsby,
and for at least fifteen years I have tried to make
my niece drop that absurd name she gave me in her
childhood. I feel it is far from appropriate for a respect-
able spinster of fifty like myself. But Betsey refuses.
"No one knows better than I what nuisances record-
temperature guests can be," I told her. “They simply
will not be content to sit on the porch and let the
cool ocean breezes blow over them. They want violent
action every minute of the day and night, and by the
time their sunburn has been treated and their aching
11


12
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
muscles rubbed with liniment, I feel as though I needed
a rest cure myself. And," I added, "I don't see how
we can have more than two."
“We can't. And unless we ask a properly married
couple, one will have to use the spare bed in my room.
The only thing we overlooked in this place was the ac-
commodation of company."
For many summers we had cast covetous eyes on the
cottage we now occupied. We would still be envying
the Bentleys, who had rented it from time immemorial,
if they had not taken it into their heads to see Europe
under the guidance of Mr. Cook. We liked our quar-
ters principally because they neither leaked nor
squeaked, two virtues which summer vacationists will
recognize as paramount. The ship carpenters who had
built the place in their spare time declared that Noab
himself couldn't have wished for a tighter or a better
substitute for the Ark.
We were entranced by the truly spacious living-room
and its mammoth fireplace, guaranteed by the agent to
draw perfectly. Undeniably the view was the best in
town, for the cottage was perched on the flat top of
a sandy, bayberry-bush-covered hill from which we
could see the greater part of Cape Cod Bay. The Bent-
leys had bragged that on a clear day they could see
Plymouth Rock and the outlines of Boston, but fruit-
less hours spent with binoculars compelled us to set that
statement down to over-enthusiasm on their part.
The bathroom was appallingly palatial. There was
om wa
was


THE WEEK-END BEGINS
13
an electric light system and an electric pump. To be
sure, the lights would and did go out during storms,
and sometimes when there was no sign of bad weather,
but poking about with feebly flickering candles once
in a while was much more preferable than having kero-
sene lamps all the time.
There was a tiny room for Olga, our cook; a garage
more than ample for Betsey's car, and all the space in
the world for Ginger the cat to roam about. There were
no near neighbors, a fact which delighted us, for many
a summer vacation had been spoiled for us by small
squalling children who raced under our windows at
dawn. Perhaps a hundred and fifty feet away there
was the Bentley childrens' playhouse, now converted
into a rough one-room cabin, but we knew it was too
small to contain any howling youngsters. It could be
seen only from the kitchen window as the agent demon-
strated when we objected to it, and we accepted his
word that its size and lack of improvements would
make it hard to rent.
There were only two drawbacks. One was the
absence of a telephone which forced us to make count-
less trips to town each day. The other was the lack of
room Betsey had mentioned. We could have but two
extra guests with any degree of comfort.
The sheaf of nine telegrams we straightway received
presented us with a task.
"All the old standbys,” Betsey said as she ran through
them. “The Poors and Jock Ellis and his unspeakable


14 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
fiancée. I say, Snoodles, here's one from John Kurth.
And look. Another from Maida Waring. We haven't
heard from those two since they were divorced, have
we?”
"No. I had the impression that he was in Sumatra
or some such place and she was in Paris.”
“That may be,” said Betsey, “but these are both
from Boston, if the Western Union isn't being funny."
"I should like to see them again, but I understand
that they've been at swords' points since they parted.
The whole thing was a pity. They were two of the
most amusing people we knew."
“Well, that counts them out, unless we want to ask
them separately later on. How'll we choose?”
“The usual way will do as well as any."
Betsey took a handful of matches and cut them up
into irregular pieces. Then thrusting an end into
each telegram so that only the tip protruded, she held
them out to me fanwise, like a bridge hand.”
"Longer end wins every time. Draw by twos.”
I drew. Betsey turned over the winning blanks.
"That's a grand combination. John and Maida, no
less. Well, we'll flip a coin."
We flipped a coin, but the same two were again
paired.
"I declare," said Betsey crossly, "it's a conspiracy.
The fates are against us. That means we'd keep on
drawing those two till Kingdom Come. And we can't
possibly ask them if they're such sworn enemies."


THE WEEK-END BEGINS
She tossed the entire bunch into the fireplace.
“Why, Betsey!” I was surprised.
"I don't care. I'm sick of having all the waifs and
strays and homeless thrust themselves on us. Let's
institute a reform. Let's ask two people we really want
to have down, two people who don't fly into a rage at
the sight of each other. Let's let all the ex-husbands
and ex-wives go hang."
I wondered vaguely why we hadn't done that very
thing long before.
"Now," Betsey continued, "take Dot Cram. If the
mercury is soaring the way the papers say, that settle-
ment of hers on the East Side of Old Manhattan must
be pretty uncomfortable. But does she cry for heat
relief like so many politicians crying for drought relief?
She does not. So I shall ask her. You know yourself
that she's one of my more normal friends, and I haven't
seen her half a dozen times since we left college. What
do you think?"
“If she can get away, I think it's a fine plan.”
"Of course she can get away. You approve of her,
don't you?"
I nodded. "I like Dot, and she does have better than
average manners for this day and age. I wonder if she
still burbles with adjectives.”
"You mean," Betsey imitated her, “My dear, it's
too simply precious and marvelous for words? That
sort of lingering emphasis as though she were loath to
let the next word out? I suppose she does, though it


16
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
may conceivably have worn off. But I know she's still
addicted to dangly earrings, and her hair is just the
same.”
"It always reminded me of a chrysanthemum."
Betsey laughed. “It is rather like one. At college
she claimed that no one really liked her till they found
out it was naturally blonde and a stranger to peroxide.
Who are you going to have?”.
"Whom,” I corrected her, "and don't say 'No one-
they. It's a mystery to me how you ever acquired an
education without gleaning a little knowledge of the
English language by the wayside.”
“Whom, then, teacher, do you intend to ask?"
“I've been thinking of Emma Manton. She hates the
heat, and I don't think she's been away from Boston
since Henry Edward died.”
"I can well see how she wouldn't enjoy the heat.
How much does she weigh?”.
"Something over two hundred and twenty-five
pounds," I answered. “The exact fraction escapes
me."
"Funny, but I can't think of her as the wife, or
rather the widow, of a clergyman. Not even of such
an eccentric clergyman as Henry Edward. She might
have been the wife of some robust Englishman out of
Dickens, but not the other. She's too addicted to
tweeds and jumper suits.”
"She'll probably bring some fresh catnip from her
garden for Ginger," I said thoughtfully.


THE WEEK-END BEGINS
17
"You old plotter! But she'll play Russian Banque
with you. And she's met Dot other summers, and they
get along together beautifully. And neither one of 'em
will want to rip and tear and dash places all the time.
Fancy Emma dashing anyway.” She snickered. “I'll
drive up and send 'em unrefusable telegrams.”
The heat-wave head-lines had appeared in Wednes-
day's paper and our guests arrived Friday on the early
morning train. They were promptly dragged off to the
beach by Betsey.
From my steamer chair on the porch I could just
see the girls on the outer raft. Despite the crowd, holi-
day size on a common week-day morning, Emma's
large black-stockinged legs were exceedingly visible as
they protruded from beneath the broad green stripes
of my own favorite beach umbrella.
I picked up my book, the Lipstick Murderer, and
prepared to revel with that doughty detective, Wyn-
cheon Woodruff, until luncheon time. But Bill Por-
ter's voice interrupted me as I was gravely consider-
ing the value of a strand of red hair as a possible clue.
"Is it blood and thunder, Snoodles, or gin and saw-
dust? From the title it might be either.”
Bill Porter has used my frivolous nickname as long
as Betsey, and upon him as upon my niece, persuasion
has no effect.
“You know perfectly well,” I told him, "that I read
mystery stories for the one and simple reason that
VICCL.


18
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
they exercise my wits. I fail to get any stimulus out
of these modern novels full of sordid reminiscences and
biological details.”
"Hooey," said Bill inelegantly. “Just as if you didn't
swipe my entire stock of Old Sleuth in days gone by
and force me to read Trollope or something equally
wordy. You said you did it to make me improve my
mind, but I always thought you wanted them yourself.
Now I'm sure of it. Think,” he sighed as though he
were in great pain, “think of your reading that vulgar
low-brow volume while a Dale Sanborn masterpiece
sits cooling its heels by your elbow." He helped him-
self to an apple turnover from the plateful Olga had
thoughtfully left on the porch.
“Oily,” he added with his mouth full. “Very oily."
“Olga said that they were particularly good to-day.”
“My dear and worthy Snoodles, I am not referring
to these toothsome pastries, and you know it. I refer
to that Sanborn gent, who is distinctly oily. How'd
he ever land in the town?”.
"I've wondered at it myself. He told me he thought
it would be a good place to rest in before starting an-
other book. What's the name of the purple-covered
thing on the table? Reverence. Well, that is his
latest effort, not available to the general public till
next month sometime. We were formally presented
with it last night. But whatever his reason for coming,
Bill, he has made up his mind to stay."
“That so? Where?"


THE WEEK-END BEGINS
19
"He's taken the cabin for the rest of the season.
He moved in, bag and baggage, this morning. I should
have thought the place was too rough for such a fastid-
ious soul, but he pronounced it enchanting.”
Bill made a wry face. “That may be a good two-
dollar word, but I know darn few men who'd pro-
nounce that shack enchanting. He's a crazy sort of
fellow."
"Crazy?"
“Well,” Bill wound himself around a footstool. “Pe-
culiar. He let slip the fact that he went to Harvard,
but when I picked him up and asked his year, he hedged
like fury. It took a good five minutes of my best
Yankee pumping to find out that he was the class of '20.
Just for fun I looked him up in an old register at home,
but I couldn't find his name in it. Maybe he went
incog., like a Student Prince. Maybe he is a Student
Prince anyway. He's got all the elements. Looks a
little foreign and condescending. Say, do you think
he's falling for our Betsey?”
I shook my head. "I don't know for sure. Numerous
young men have fallen in love with Betsey at one time
and another, and he's shown some of the symptoms. Of
course he didn't decide to stay here till after he met
her. But the only real peculiarity I've noticed in him
is his tendency to say "Thank-you' in one syllable, as
though it were a thing you played billiards with.”
Bill chuckled. "I do hope he isn't after Betsey. I
always had a sneaking feeling that I'd like to marry the


THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
gal myself. Would you mind awfully having the scion
of the Porter millions for a nephew-in-law?”.
“On the contrary, I think I should like it.”
As a matter of fact I had always intended Bill to
marry Betsey. Not because of the Porter money, for
Betsey had enough of her own, but rather in spite of it.
As Bill once remarked, it wasn't his fault that his
father turned the family carriage business into a pros-
perous automobile company.
"But would Betsey mind, do you think? At the
moment she thinks I'm a wastrel of the worst type.
She even has some fantastic notion about my going to
work. Why," he took another turnover, “why should
I go to work?"
The question was rhetorical. There was no earthly
reason why Bill Porter should work. His older brother
Jimmy has carried off the business honors of the family
since Porter, Senior, died, and Bill has always acknowl-
edged his own incompetence as a business man.
"If," he went on, “I got myself a job with the Porter
outfit, Jimmy would put me to work balancing ledgers
or filing blotters. And there are plenty of needy in-
dividuals in this world who can balance ledgers or file
blotters better than I could hope to in a million years.
And now that I'm a selectman and on the school commit-
tee I find enough to do right here in the town. My
taxes swell the local coffers and make for better roads
and things. In the city they wouldn't even repair an
aged cobblestone."


THE WEEK-END BEGINS
21
"If she wants you to go to work,” I soothed him, “it's
because she thinks about your future and that means
she's interested, at least.”
"Maybe that's so. I never thought of it in that light.
I've been Billy the boy companion so long that I'm
dubious of her ever thinking of me as Billy the fond
husband. Besides, girls don't want to marry people
they know as well as Betsey knows me. She knows
how I look when I haven't had a shave and how I like
my eggs cooked and everything else.”
He turned and looked morosely over the bay. The
brilliant July sun flashed over the tiny waves as the
tide slid unobtrusively in the harbor. An occasional
squawking gull made a brief white dot on the sky of
the Cape's own particular blue. The gilt cupola of the
house Grandfather Porter had built glittered from the
left arm of the bay. Over to the right a group of town
boys were diving from the dilapidated wharf that had
once been the pride of the town. The oyster-shell lane
that led from the cottage down the hill past the tennis
courts shone like a piece of white satin ribbon. I re-
membered that Betsey's impractical underclothing
needed new straps. Beyond the road was the sandy
strip where the natives and summer people alike made
splotches of bright color.
"There's Sanborn now," Bill said suddenly. “Talk-
ing with Betsey and your visitors down by the bath
house. I saw Dot and Mrs. Manton at the station this
morning. Dot looked tired."


22
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“She says New York is simply a boiling steaming
cauldron."
Bill laughed. “You know, the more I look at your
friend Emma the more she reminds me of that mammoth
bronze Buddha, the resigned one in Japan somewhere.
It's fifty feet high and about double that in girth.”
"You say she's like a Buddha and Betsey says she's
like the wife of some one out of Dickens.”
“She's a combination of both. Did you ever read
any of Sanborn's books, Snoodles?”.
"Not exactly. I started one of them once. That
one they called The Greatest Exposé of Married Life
in America. It was all about a man-no; about a girl
who loved a man who was married to a girl-I think
this is straight—who loved a man who loved the first
mentioned girl. It confused me to such an extent that
I left off on page forty. It was a little nasty, too. I am
not convinced that his characters bear any resemblance
to human beings, though I am given to understand that
he takes his stories from life.”
"Most authors,” Bill commented, "love to call their
works the creation of a fertile imagination. I had an
idea that it was a law of the author's union or some-
thing to disclaim any connection with real life at all.”
"So did I. But he gloats over the fact that his tales
are true. I haven't tackled the new one yet. I haven't
had time, but I very much doubt whether I read it
at all. I'm sure that the Lipstick Murderer is vastly
more entertaining."
more e


THE WEEK-END BEGINS
23
“Better not let your niece hear any such heresy. She
thinks he's got Dreiser and those lads all sewed up
in a sack.” He grinned.
Except when he grins, no one would accuse Bill Porter
of being good-looking. For one thing, his nose is far
too hawk-like and his ears protrude more than is per-
missible for masculine beauty. He has the Porter
face, too, which my father used to describe as being
double-breasted in shape. There is a long scar on his
forehead where an enthusiastic hockey opponent thrust
several inches of skate. But when Bill grins, one for-
gets these details and sees only that his eyes are gray
and honest and his chin is firm.
His ensemble of dungarees and a faded blue shirt
were not what one expects to find the well-dressed man
wearing. Dale Sanborn, I reflected, would probably
not care to be seen in Bill's outfit at the proverbial
dog-fight. Sanborn was always so perfectly dressed.
Bill rose from the stool as Betsey came up on the
porch with Dot and Emma bringing up the rear.
“The water was too perfectly gorgeous, Miss Pru-
dence," Dot's earrings jangled as she bobbed her head
to emphasize her statement. “Wasn't it just, Mrs.
Manton? Wasn't it absolutely divine? And why didn't
you tell me that Dale Sanborn was here? I thought
he was out on Long Island, or some other island."
"I didn't know you knew him," I said mildly. Al-
most any remark seems mild after listening to Dot
flow on.


24 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"But I do, really I do. And I think it's too ut-
terly splendid to find him down here."
"If you have anything,” Emma interrupted, "that I
could read, I think I'll take it up-stairs and browse
till luncheon."
She looked at the collection on the table.
"Take your choice,” I said.
"Don't you have anything but murders?” She asked
plaintively. “Haven't you anything in a calm restful
story where the hero and the heroine end up happily
in each other's arms?”
“Betsey goes in for the moderns and I specialize
in murder," I said. “But here's Dale Sanborn's latest.
I don't know what it's about, but I feel sure it's noth-
ing so commonplace as murder. And it's autographed.”'
"I'll take it.” She stopped at the threshold. "Is
lunch at one?”
"At two. It's dinner to-day because Olga has the
afternoon and evening off instead of Thursday. It's
inconvenient, but we have a pick-up supper. You can
browse over Mr. Sanborn for two hours or so."
"Is it his very newest?" Dot inquired. "How too
wonderful.”
"Simply precious,” Bill teased her. “You know,
just too truly splendiferous. You girls want to get
the mail? If you do, I'll take you up to the post-office
in Lucinda. To prove my sterling worth, I'll even take
you to the grocery and let you do the family marketing
for Snoodles.”


THE WEEK-END BEGINS 25
“Oh!” Dot squealed. “Do you have Lucinda even
now? Do you still drive it?”
"Even now,” Betsey answered for him. “And he still
drives the thing, though one of these fine days it's go-
ing to disintegrate like the One Hoss Shay. Jimmy
sent him a sixteen-cylinder roadster this spring. It's
got a special body, silver fittings and a lalique radiator
ornament, a trick horn and Lord knows what all else.
It's even got a radio tucked away somewhere. But does
he use it? He does nothing of the kind.”
“Why, Bill, how utterly insane of you!”
"It scares me to death,” he confessed. “And the
town would think I was putting on side. And Lucinda
understands me like a brother.”
“She ought to,” Betsey returned; "you've certainly
driven that wreck for ten years at least.”
“Eleven," said Bill placidly. "If you're bound to
malign her, give the lass her due.”
"Eleven then. And do you expect us to ride with
you in those awful clothes?”
Dot found a slicker in Lucinda's capacious tool chest
and together they forced Bill into it.
He put his yachting cap at a forty-five-degree angle,
wrapped the slicker around him and struck an atti-
tude.
“'My own convenience counts as nil,—it is my
duty and I will!'” he declaimed. "Be good, Snoodles,
until this here Light Brigade gets back, when and if
it does.”


26 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
• They wedged themselves into Lucinda's worn front
seat and drove off to town.
I wondered as I watched them down the hill if there
were a front seat in existence into which at least four
modern young people could not wedge themselves. I
doubted it. Picking up my thriller, I went back to the
clue of the strand of red hair.


CHAPTER II
A QUIET EVENING AT HOME
IT WAS nearly three o'clock before we left the lunch-
eon table. The most rigorous dieter of my acquaint-
ance, an otherwise sensible woman who makes a fetish
of eating strange synthetic foods to the exclusion of
everything else, has been known to succumb and to
succumb very completely to Olga's cooking. And Olga,
who takes delight in having company to praise her food,
had fairly outdone herself. We are almost unpleasantly
replete after her specialties of clam chowder and hot
biscuits. Emma sighed slightly as she settled herself
in the largest of our wicker chairs.
"Do you remember, Prudence, that little paragraph
we were taught to say when we were children? 'I have
a genteel sufficiency, thank you, more would be a super-
fluous redundancy'? That completely expresses my
sentiments. You know, when I think of the sheer and
solid pleasure I've taken in eating everything I wanted
all my life, and as much as I wanted to boot, I don't
begrudge one inch of my massive waist-line. Where's
my knitting?”
"You left it on the table.” Betsey brought it to her.
Calmly she pulled forth an afghan and began to
knit.


28
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“Isn't that a warm occupation for these days?" I
asked.
"I suppose it is, but I'm always hot and I can't
see that this makes much difference. And I lost mil-
lions of stitches on the train this morning.”
“She simply worked at it all the way down," Dot
informed us, “even at that place where we had the hot
box. I don't see how she can bear it, I honestly don't.”
She reached for a cigarette and moaned a little. “You
know I feel like that goat in the fairy story who was
so full he couldn't pull another blade of grass. Only
I'm so full I can't bleat as I ought to at the end. Really,
if you all had eaten the countless dollar dinners that
I have consumed in the last months, you would under-
stand how perfectly heavenly real honest-to-goodness
food that was actually home-like could taste.”
"D'you remember college food?" Betsey asked,
shuddering.
“Veal cutlet and eggplant, with maybe a little snack
of some perfectly sand-strewn spinach? My dear Bets,
after the thousands of veal cutlets I downed at that
institution I actually feel I couldn't look a cow in the
face without positively blushing like a girl.”
Dale Sanborn overheard her comment as he sauntered
up the steps. "Could you," he asked, "blush like a
girl if you tried?"
Dot made a face at him. “Smarty.”
He bowed to Emma and me. "I have a boon to ask
of you. Does this perfectly well-run house possess a


A QUIET EVENING AT HOME 20
hammer? My hovel does not. And I have clothes
which must be hung up on nails that must be driven.”
"Fop," said Betsey pleasantly. “Beau Brummel.
Dandy. What other words are there?”
"Dude,” Dot helped her out. “Also, buck, macaroni,
swell- "
“Come, come.” Sanborn seated himself carefully on
the lounge. “That's unworthy of you. If Wellfleet
possesses no tailor, why blame a man for trying to keep
himself presentable?”
"We don't.” Betsey ran like a bell-boy for the re-
quired instrument.
“Dot says she knew you in New York.” I made an
effort at polite conversation.
"Dot did,” said Sanborn indifferently.
I noticed a puzzled expression in Dot's eyes.
Emma got up. “I still feel the need of resting. I
had to get up at five this morning to be at the station
in time to catch that abominable train. I doubt if I
ever rid myself of the cinders ground into my person,
and I know I shall feel that red plush sticking into my
back for hours."
As she left Betsey came back brandishing a hammer.
"Voilà, or is it voici? Anyway, take your menial
tool. It has our name scrawled on the handle, so you
can't abscond with it."
Sanborn took it and bowed low, sweeping the floor
with an imaginary hat. He was, I thought, a little
oily. I tried to make out why. It might have been the


30
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
chorus-boy perfection of his too-well-cut flannels and
blue coat, or possibly his highly manicured fingers. My
father always warned me about men with manicured
hands. Such a man, he said, was never a gentleman by
birth but by accident. I decided that it was Sanborn's
sleek black hair, like patent leather, that had caused
Bill's comment.
“I depart to ham with the hammer,” Sanborn an-
nounced.
As he went down the steps Betsey called after him.
"Speaking of ham, have you had your first meal at Mrs.
Howe's yet?”
"Not yet, alas. I missed lunch, the meal she terms
dinner, by several hours. I had to snatch a bite at the
hostelry. But I shall have dinner, which she knows
as supper, there to-night. I haven't yet purchased the
napkin ring she demanded with my first week's board.
Do you suppose I have to use one napkin all week?”
"You most assuredly do," I told him. "You get a
clean one with Sunday dinner.”
He wrinkled his nose. "Horrid thought. I'll have
to invest in some paper ones along with the ring. Shall
I see you at the movies to-night?”
“Very likely," Betsey answered. “You'll find us up
front on the left-hand side, if you come late. I'm too
near-sighted to see a picture unless I'm on top of it."
“Farewell, then.” He flourished his hammer and
walked away.
“Known him long?” Betsey asked Dot.


A QUIET EVENING AT HOME
31 .
“Uh-huh.” She was abrupt.
“Amusing, don't you think?”
“Yes. My dear, did I tell you I had seen Charlotte
Waite? She's gone and got herself married to an interne
from Bellevue and all she can talk of are things like
low-grade morons and feeble-minded infants and de-
generates of one sort or another."
"Tell me,” Betsey begged rapturously. “Tell me all
the news.”
The two chatted in that causticly outspoken manner
so characteristic of their generation. Their gossip had
its humorous side, but I felt a little glad that I was
not one of their absent friends. Dot had innumerable
stories of their contemporaries which she recounted at
length, embellishing them, I suspected, with touches
from her very vivid imagination.
I picked up the paper and contentedly read the com-
parative temperatures of the different eastern cities.
Somehow it makes me feel superior and very satis-
fied to learn that Boston and New York and way-
stations are melting, while I myself bask in a pleasant
ocean breeze.
At half past four I went out into the kitchen.
"You're not going to get more food, I hope," Bet-
sey said.
"Man must eat,” I told her, "though I've often
thought how much more simple and convenient it would
be if he didn't. I have to see that Olga has left us the
basis of a supper."


32
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
I found sliced bread for sandwiches covered with a
damp cloth. There were fruits for a salad and a pitcher
of iced tea in the electric refrigerator. That refriger-
ator had been another added attraction to the cottage.
Until this summer we had carried our ice like the rest
of the summer people from freight cars at the station
whenever a load of ice happened to come in. Now we
stood by and watched with an evil gleam of joy in our
eyes as people raced cars home with their hunks of ice
dismally dripping from a running-board.
In the cake box there was a plate of sugar ginger-
bread. Olga was a treasure. Sometimes she resembled
a block of hard pine wood, but she was a treasure. She
had remembered everything. Everything except lem-
ons, I amended to myself, and those essential articles
had probably been forgotten by the girls in their shop-
ping trip of the morning.
I called to Betsey. "If you want your supper to be
a success, you'll have to dash up to town and buy some
lemons."
“Did we forget 'em, Snoodles?” She was contrite.
"I'm awfully sorry, but it's all the fault of that idiot
Bill. He picked out his own groceries at the store and
then fussed and fumed and hurried us because we hadn't
got hold of any one to wait on us. What time is it?”
"Twenty minutes to five. You have plenty of time
to get there before the place closes. I know it's a
nuisance, but I'd rather have an omelette without eggs
than iced tea without lemons."


A QUIET EVENING AT HOME 35
I told her she could spread sandwiches. “But before
you do anything else, you'd better cut a cucumber up
and rub the pieces over your face. If you don't you'll
have a beautiful sunburn to-morrow."
"Is it as bad as all that?” She pulled a compact
out of her pocket and gazed earnestly at herself. “Why,
I'm practically purple, aren't I? I mean, I'm sort of
awf’ly red. I guess it's the superfluous heat or the
bad coming out of me or the red plush from that nasty
train. But it isn't sunburn. I don't sunburn. Ever.”
She sat down and stirred mayonnaise into deviled
ham. “I completely forgot to ask you, Miss Prudence,
what with talking with Betsey about one thing and
another, and I'm afraid you'll think I'm dumb or dull
or stupid. Where's that blond cat that was so fright-
fully dignified?”
"Ginger? Oh, he's about somewhere. He's given
up hunting on the meadow for the time being, and he
plays now in the pine trees back of the cabin. It's
a great relief. We find only peculiar beetles on the
door-step instead of long-tailed field mice.”
"He was such an uncanny beast,” Dot said admir-
ingly. "What were his favorite foods? Weren't they
something bizarre like jelly rolls and doughnuts?"
- "Not jelly rolls. Sugared doughnuts, vanilla ice-
cream and sardines. I think he learned to like the
last because of constant association. Betsey has a
weakness for them.”
“Don't,” said Dot in a horrified tone, "don't tell
a


36 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
me. I know. Didn't I watch her eat those edibles
done in oils for four years? And Bill Porter is another
addict of them, isn't he?”
I nodded.
“That boy bought a dozen tins this morning at the
store, just the same casual sort of way you buy a loaf
of bread or a yeast cake.”
“The two of them,” I observed, "have contributed
materially to the welfare of Norway or Sweden or Den-
mark or wherever sardines come from."
"Contributed materially? Miss Prudence, I'm will-
ing to wager they've come darned near supporting a
dozen fishing villages, not to speak of making 'em
so simply prosperous and flourishing as to make charity
workers like me homeless and jobless.”
"And why not?” Betsey came in and dumped a
paper bag on the table. “Why not? We're helping
humanity, that's what. And humanity is always sort
of down at the heels and needing help.”
"Don't be idiotic," I said, "and go and tell Emma that
she can eat her supper now, if the spirit so moves her.”
“There's no need. She's coming."
We heard her heavy footsteps on the stairs.
"More food? Prudence, I'm ashamed to say I'm
hungry. Maybe it's the air. Or do I always say that?”
"You don't,” Betsey assured her, “and you can carry
in the salad.”
"I forgot to ask you, Emma. How do you like
Dale Sanborn's book?"


A QUIET EVENING AT HOME 37
She answered New England fashion with another
question. "How do you?”
"I haven't read it. None of us has. He brought
it over only last night.”
"I'll tell you better,” she said cryptically, “when
I've heard your opinions.”
After supper was done and the dishes stacked for
Olga's benefit, Betsey proposed the movies,
"Hmmmm,” said Emma. “Do you expect to fit the
four of us, including me, into that—that thing you call
a car?"
"Oh, no," said Betsey. "I'll make two trips. Or
Bill can take you if he drops around. Or Dale. Only
I guess he's at dinner. I didn't see his car outside
the house."
“Thank you, but I prefer to stay at home. I don't
suppose you'd care to play some bridge?”
"With two sharks like you and Snoodles? Nothing
doing. We'd lose all our money and have to go on
the dole. We'd have I.O.U.'s for years to come. We'd
land in the poorhouse."
“Very well,” I said resignedly. “Go to your movie
and we will stay here and play Russian Banque. Only
bring us some pop-corn."
It has always been my impression that people went
to the moving-picture theater in the town for the sole
purpose of getting pop-corn from the vender in the
lobby. I could see no other charm in the over-crowded
room where one sat on hard chairs and watched pictures
So
roo
es


38 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
whose first flush of youth had long since passed. But
the young people went religiously every night, sprawled
on the uncomfortable seats, ate pop-corn noisily, and
even had a type of lottery based on the number of
times the machine broke down and the ornate hand-
tinted “One Moment Please” notice appeared.
Emma and I sat down to our Russian Banque, and
for two solid hours we played as though the fate of
nations waited on the outcome.
At ten o'clock Emma pushed the cards from her.
“That's enough. I refuse to lose any more to you,
even at a tenth of a cent. Two more games like the
last one and I'd live on stew and rice pudding for the
rest of the year.”
“Very well,” I said mockingly. “If you're afraid - "
"I'm not afraid. I'm tired. Isn't it about time for
the girls to be coming back?"
“Any minute.”
“Did it ever occur to you, Prudence, that there was
something between Dot and that Sanborn man?”
“Not especially. Why?”.
"I don't know. Maybe it was the way she greeted
him down at the bath house this morning. She seemed
terribly glad to see him, but he wasn't very demon-
strative. What do you think of him?"
"I hadn't thought one way or another. Bill says he's
oily and falling in love with Betsey. If I had to make
up my mind I'd say I didn't like him. Case of Doctor
Fell, I suppose. What's your opinion?”
an 11


A QUIET EVENING AT HOME 39
She shrugged her shoulders. "I saw him for five
seconds this morning and five more this afternoon. His
book is rot."
"I suspected as much,” I told her.
Laden with bags of pop-corn which dribbled over
the floor Betsey and Dot came in.
“It was an awful picture,” Betsey informed us as
she doled out the pop-corn. “Reel broke four times, the
pianist fell asleep, Bill wasn't there, and that wretch
Dale wasn't either. And his car is in the garage and the
light in the cabin is out. And you heard him say he'd
see us up there."
Sanborn was keeping his car in our garage since
the cabin did not possess one.
“Did you shut the kitchen door?” I asked suddenly.
"I hope and pray that you haven't let the cat out."
Betsey looked inquiringly at Dot.
“Oh, my dear, I know I was the last one in, and I'm
sure I didn't. D’you suppose the creature has gone
and dashed out into the night?”.
"Undoubtedly.” I rose and tapped experimentally on
an ash-tray. Ginger did not come.
"He's gone, then,” said Betsey wearily. She ex-
plained to Dot. “That's his signal for food. Tapping
on crockery means 'Here's your fish—come and get it.'
Well, I'll take the light and reconnoiter."
"Never mind," I said. "I'll do it myself. You'll
only frighten him to death and then he won't come in
to-night. And there are skunks about. Olga saw one.”


40
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
I found Ginger cavorting on the back step. Being
let out at night was a novel experience and he was en-
joying every second of it. He saw me coming toward
him, heard my persuasive "Come, Ginger. Come,
Ginny, Ginny."
With a flick of his tail that was the equivalent of
a thumb to his nose, he turned and ran toward the
pines. At the cabin he swerved and with the aid of
my flash-light I saw him disappear inside.
I made winning noises and clucked my tongue sym-
pathetically. He would not come. Warily I followed
along the sandy path.
At the cabin door I rapped and called “Mr. San-
born!” But Dale did not answer. Holding my light
in front of me I stepped somewhat hesitantly into the
cabin.
Ginger was half under the table, industriously lap-
ping something from the floor. I made a quick grab
at him and picked him up under my arm. He had been
eating olive oil from an empty sardine tin.
I turned my flash-light around the cabin, intending
an explanation to Sanborn, whom I expected to find in
bed. But the bed was empty, untouched. The light
rested on what seemed to be a blanket roll lying
parallel to the table in the center of the room.
Still managing to retain Ginger, I bent over curi-
ously to look at something white that stuck out from
under it. It was a shoe, an immaculate white suede
shoe.


A QUIET EVENING AT HOME
41
Holding my breath, I knelt down and jerked the
blanket aside. Dressed as we had seen him that after-
noon lay Dale Sanborn, sprawled limply, face down-
ward, on the floor. I touched him. Then, with Ginger
squealing, I half ran, half stumbled back along the
path to the cottage.
Dale Sanborn was dead. And men do not die and
then tuck a blanket over themselves.
Dale Sanborn had been murdered.


CHAPTER III
MR. SULLIVAN TAKES HOLD
"Did you get him?” Betsey asked as I entered the
living-room. “Why, you're white as a sheet and you're
squeezing that cat to death! What ever's the matter,
Snoodles? You look as though you'd seen a corpse."
I let Ginger jump to the floor and all but fell into
a chair. “I have,” I told her gaspingly, "Betsey, Dale
Sanborn has been killed.”
“What!” Her voice rose to a shriek.
“Killed?” Emma repeated.
Dot opened her mouth to speak, but before the words
could come out she gave a little shiver and slumped to
the floor in a limp heap at our feet.
Emma took command of the situation. "Betsey,
don't lift her head up. Leave it down. And bring some
ammonia and a glass of water and a cloth. No, you
ninny, spirits of ammonia."
Calmly she held an ammonia soaked cloth under
Dot's nose.
"Pour some of that stuff into the glass and give it
to your aunt. She looks as though she needed it. No,
not any more. There, drink it, Prudence.”
We found ourselves obeying like small children. I
made a face, but I drank the unpleasant concoction
42


MR. SULLIVAN TAKES HOLD
and I must admit that though I was still trembling
it made me feel better.
In a moment Dot recovered. Emma led her to the
lounge in front of the fire.
“Stay put there. Now, Prudence, just what is all
this about?"
Haltingly I told her of my attempt to catch Ginger
and of my discovery in the cabin.
She nodded thoughtfully. Her air of resigned calm
is one of the reasons why I enjoy her, but at that mo-
ment it was distinctly annoying and I told her so.
"You're exactly like the Buddha Bill was talking
about,” I added with irritation.
"I'm sorry, Prudence, but life with Henry Edward
has dulled my natural reactions of surprise. He made
a point of doing the unusual, and I suppose I am used
to startling things. Of course I'm shocked by this. I
was wondering what we ought to do about it.”
"I'd tell you, but I don't know.” And I didn't.
Betsey gave a nervous giggle. "It—it doesn't tell
what to do in books of etiquette on the occasion of
a murder.”
"Come here.” Emma spoke sharply. She took Bet-
sey by the shoulders and shook her till her teeth fairly
rattled. “This, young woman, is not the time for you
to indulge in any hysterics. Have you any brandy in
the house? Well, go take some and bring some to Dot.”
She sat down and continued. "Now, for heaven's
sakes, will you all pull yourselves together and think of


THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
what we ought to do? Isn't there a policeman up-town?
I thought I saw one by the crossroads at the station.”
"You mean the one who directed traffic with a rolled-
up newspaper? He's only a local man stationed there
to prevent collisions. I'm sure there must be a sheriff,
but I don't know who he is."
"He works at the grocery store,” Betsey said. “His
name is Sullivan,”
"And you haven't a telephone? Well, Betsey, finish
that brandy and get your car. You'll have to go up
and get him and the doctor."
"Right.” Betsey pulled on her chamois jacket.
"I'm ashamed of myself for making such a scene. I
don't know about such things, but shouldn't some one
go and stay till the doctor or sheriff gets here? It doesn't
seem right for him—for it to be there all alone."
"We'll look after that. You get along."
"And what time is it?"
"A bit after ten-thirty. Hurry up."
“Yes. But I think the state policeman who patrols
the beach ought to be around about this time. Shall
I bring him if I see him?"
"Bring any one with authority. Now, hustle!”
As she left Emma turned to me.
"I suppose there is something in her suggestion.
Some one ought to be over there. I'll take the flash-
light and sit outside till they get here."
"You're not going over there by yourself,” I said
firmly. "If you go, I go."


MR. SULLIVAN TAKES HOLD
"Very well. Dot, will you be all right here alone?"
She looked at us through red and tear-stained eyes.
“I'll be all right.”
"I hope so.” I put Olga's bell by her hand. "Ring
this if you think you want us. You had better lie where
you are and not try any moving around.”
“Thank you. Like Bets, I'm sorry I made such a
nuisance of myself.” She tried to smile.
"Come on," Emma commanded. She picked up a
small chair and a footstool. “You hold the torch.”
We planted the chair and the stool in the sand a
few feet from the cabin door. There was no moon, but
the sky was almost overcrowded with stars. Uncon-
sciously I looked for the Big Dipper, then felt a little
ashamed to be star-gazing while Sanborn lay dead
behind in the cabin.
"Who d’you suppose did it?" Emma asked.
“I haven't the remotest idea. Why, there wasn't
any one in town who knew him— "
"Except?”
"Well, except Betsey and Bill and myself, and you
and Dot of course, and the house agent and Mrs. Howe
who was going to give him meals, and a few shop-
keepers, I suppose. And the fellow at the garage, and
the hotel people.”
"Practically no one." Emma commented sardonically.
"I should say that Sanborn knew quite a collection of
people. And if I'm any judge of small towns and this
small town in particular, I'd say he was known by a


46 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
still greater collection. Where did Betsey meet him?”
“On the tennis courts. The Stockton girl was to
play with her, but she didn't show up. Sanborn intro-
duced himself and asked if she would play with him."
"I see. It looks to me, Prudence, as though you
would have no need to devour mystery stories for some
time to come. I think that you are going to have a
good material problem to work on right here which
ought to keep you occupied.”
“And what chance shall I have to do anything?”
"You never can tell what may turn up. I'll wager
what you won from me to-night at Russian Banque
I'll double it if I lose and we'll call it quits if I win-
that before to-morrow is over you'll be mixed up in
this.”
"Done. But I do hope you're not insinuating, Emma
Manton, that I killed that man?”
"No. What I mean is that you are too like your
father not to stick your nose into this pie. He was too
good a criminal lawyer for you not to have some in-
herited instincts, or whatever you call 'em, about this
sort of thing."
"I can't make out whether you're insulting me.”
"I'm not. Look!” She pointed to headlights rush-
ing along the beach road. "Here they are."
Betsey was the first to draw up in front of the
cabin. She trained her headlights on the door.
"I found Olga walking home so I gave her a lift.
I told her all about everything."


MR. SULLIVAN TAKES HOLD 47
"Perhaps she'd better go and look after Dot,” I
suggested. “I don't like leaving her there alone."
Olga nodded and disappeared in the direction of the
cottage.
"And I found Hunter, the state cop,” Betsey went
on, as a figure dismounted from a motor-cycle, "and
here's the doctor."
Apparently she had caught him just as he was about
to retire, for I could see gaudily striped pajamas under
his dressing-gown.
The inhabitants of the town resented the lanky
doctor. They admitted that he was good in his profes-
sion, but they looked a little askance at his habit of
mingling with the summer people. His hobby of col-
lecting Currier and Ives prints, Victorian bric-à-brac,
and almost anything that was old and full of worm
holes, added to their distrust. His father, the “Old
Doc,” had never done anything of the kind, and they
considered it "kind o' funny” on the part of the son.
“Young” Doctor Reynolds—he was called "young"
although his father had been dead for years and he him-
self was over forty—was as likely to be found on the
links or about a bridge table at the country club as in
his office. He liked nothing better than to hear himself
talk, he knew the life-history of every one within
twenty miles, and he was as inveterate an old gossip
as ever lived.
It was characteristic that he apologized for his cos-
tume before commenting on Sanborn.


48
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Just going to bed. A nasty business, very un- !
pleasant for you at the cottage. If he really was killed
there'll be no end of trouble. Hunter will stay here,
so you may as well go back. I'll drop over when I'm
through.”
It was perhaps fifteen minutes before he came into
the living-room.
"I'll wait here, if you don't mind, till Slough turns
up. Hunter will stay there till morning or until we
can get an undertaker.”
“Who is Slough?"
“Slough Sullivan, Miss Whitsby. He's the sheriff.”
The doctor laughed and lighted a cigarette. "He got
the job after Ben Potts died last year. Ben had been
sheriff for as long as I can remember, but the flu got
him at last. The town elected Sullivan because he used
to be on the force in Boston and they felt they
ought to keep up with the modern trends in crimi-
nology. Clerking at the grocery store is his more profit-
able occupation. I telephoned him from the house
and he said he'd come as soon as he got his uniform
on. Funny, I didn't know he had a uniform. That
sounds like his car now."
"Hey, Slough,” he called from the porch, "come
here before you go over.”
I looked curiously at the man who walked into the
room. I had seen him countless times at the store, but
I don't suppose I had ever really taken a good look
at him up till pow. He wore the dark blue uniform


MR. SULLIVAN TAKES HOLD 49
which I knew had belonged to the Boston police of at
least twenty years ago. It was complete from the high-
crowned helmet to the full-skirted coat. There was
even a long billy suspended from his broad leather
belt.
It was very apparent that Mr. Sullivan had gained at
least forty pounds since he last wore his official garb.
He looked sleepy, uncomfortable, ludicrous and very
dull. Nodding to us, he addressed the doctor.
"I tell you what, Doc, this seems like old times.
That's what it does. Captain Kinney of the old second
precinct station used to say that there was never any-
thing in the world like a murder. He used to say that
it was just like a war. It gave people a chance to
talk and think, and this place ain't had a murder for a
hundred years. Body's over at the cabin?”
"Yes."
"Didn't leave it all alone, did you?”
"Hunter, the state cop, is over there."
"Oh, him!” Sullivan sniffed. “Well, let's get going,
Doc. Who found out about this?"
I told him that I had.
"Well, Miss Whitsby, will you come along with us?
One of the other ladies can come along with you."
Betsey poked me.
"Can't they both?” I asked.
"Why, I guess so. Yes.”
In Sullivan's car was a boy whom I recognized as
his son.


50
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Now, Mike, you might as well drive the ladies over.
There's plenty of room for 'em in back with your
camera. Mike,” Sullivan explained proudly, "wants to
be a police photographer.”
We were jounced over to the cabin.
The sheriff and the doctor came by the path. Hunter
greeted the former genially.
“Swell job for you, Slough."
Betsey shuddered at his jovial tone, but Sullivan
nodded abstractedly.
Mike lugged in his apparatus and we followed into
the tiny room. The body lay as I had found it, covered
by a blanket. Two kerosene lamps provided sufficient
illumination for me to make a closer inspection than
I had on my previous visit.
The sardine tin still lay under the table, just as
Ginger had found it. From a curtained closet at the far
corner of the room I could see suits and a coat hanging.
A large half-unpacked bag lay on a chair; beside it was
one of those expanding suitcases whose flatness showed
that its contents had been removed.
The doctor had left his kit on the untouched bed.
On top of the table next to the lamps were various
small articles, a razor, a watch and an open platinum
cigarette case full of the long brown Cuban cigarettes
Sanborn affected. A tennis racquet in a press was
the only object on the top of a chest of drawers.
“Everything like you saw it?” Sullivan asked me.
"As far as I can tell. I took only a brief glance."


MR. SULLIVAN TAKES HOLD 51
Sullivan leaned over the body and pulled back the
blanket. "That's Sanborn?”
Emma stiffened beside me, and I heard Betsey gasp.
For the first time, I think, I realized what had actually
happened. The kerosene lamps cast strange flickering
lights on the still body and once, when the breeze came
in strongly, and the lamps nearly went out, I had a
queer feeling that the body had moved. I knew it was
only an optical illusion, but even the doctor looked
startled for a moment.
"Yes, that is Dale Sanborn," I answered at last.
"Well, Mike,” Sullivan addressed his son, “you take
a picture of it with the blanket and then without, and
then we'll get down to business."
Young Sullivan adjusted a rickety tripod and with a
great deal of difficulty succeeded in fixing his anti-
quated camera to his satisfaction. He poured out a
liberal portion of powder on a T-shaped holder and
touched it with a match. Instantly we were blinded
and very nearly asphyxiated by the clouds of smoke.
"By golly!” Mike informed us ruefully as the at-
mosphere cleared. "If I didn't go and forget to take
that slide out. Now I got to take another of that.”
He took another and yet another.
"I'm all run out of powder,” he said sadly.
Emma gave a relieved cough. "I trust that my face
is not as grimy from those vast explosions as yours is,'.
she whispered.
I assured her that it was.


52 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
The doctor spoke softly in my ear. “None of 'em
will come out. He forgot all the slides, and he was too
excited about the powder to notice. As a police photog-
rapher he'd make a whale of a bricklayer.”
But neither Sullivan nor his son seemed aware that
anything was wrong.
“Now," said the former, "we've identified the body
and taken a picture of it for future reference. You're
the medical examiner too, ain't you, Doc?”
“Yes, I am."
“What's a medical examiner?" I asked.
"Name they have for a coroner in this state. Now,
Doc, what was the cause of his death?”
The doctor girded his dressing-gown more tightly
about him and took the center of the floor—that is,
as nearly as one could take the center of any floor
perhaps twenty by twenty-five feet on which there were
already six persons, odds and ends of furniture and a
murdered man.
"Well,” began the doctor pompously, "well, unless
the autopsy indicates the presence of some natural or-
ganic trouble, and from my examination that is highly
unlikely, or unless it shows the presence of poison,
which may be possible, though I greatly doubt it, this
man was killed by a blow struck at the base of the skull
by some blunt instrument. And,” he added, "whoever
did it made a very good job of it, too."
"Blunt instrument?” Sullivan seemed puzzled. “Then
there wasn't no weapon?”


MR. SULLIVAN TAKES HOLD 53
“The blunt instrument was the weapon used,” said
the doctor in the tone of a second-grade teacher ex-
plaining that B follows A.
"How?”
"Well, Sullivan, the most convenient and practical
agent that one can find for homicide, whether premed-
itated or with malice aforethought, is a blunt weapon.
That is principally due to the fact that there is a
great prevalence of blunt instruments”-he gave the
sheriff a sidelong glance to see if his sarcasm was having
any effect; it wasn't, so he went on—"and the corre-
sponding rarity of Oriental daggers and untraceable
South American poisons. At least, they're rare from
Sagamore Bridge to Race Point. And in a case of what
you might call extemporaneous murder a blunt instru-
ment is pretty nearly always employed. However ex-
pert you may be in pistol shooting or fencing with a
saber or smallsword, your knowledge will avail you very
little when confronted with the necessity of doing mur-
der with your choice of weapons limited, say, to a
cloisonné vase of the Ming dynasty or the leg of a
Louise XV escritoire.”
Sullivan listened with rapt attention, though I was
sure he had grasped very little of the doctor's lecture.
I am sorry to say that I restrained a giggle with ex-
treme difficulty. Somehow a nervous reaction was
setting in. I knew that Emma and Betsey, too, wanted
to laugh. The doctor eyed us suspiciously.
"In this case,” he went on, "the murderer has not


54 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
only adapted himself so well to the circumstances that
the murder might have been committed with anything
from a fifteenth-century war mace to a rolled-up copy of
The Saturday Evening Post, but— "
"You mean," Sullivan interrupted, "that you don't
know what he hit him with?”
"You have hit the nail right upon the head. I don't
know with what instrument he or she or whoever com-
mitted the murder struck Mr. Sanborn. You see, there
is nothing unique or peculiar about this style of killing a
person. The blow struck sharply at the base of the
skull is so simple and so deadly that it is found in
nearly all types of combat between unarmed men. You
know the blow in modern boxing under the name of
'Rabbit Punch.' It appears in systems of fighting as
widely separated as the rough and tumble of the Irish
peasants of the eleventh century and jiu-jitsu of Japan.”
“Then,” said Sullivan excitedly, "it might have been
a Jap?”
“Or a French or Dutch or Proosian,” the doctor re-
torted. “Or a Zulu. Such a blow, Slough, strikes the
cervical plexus, and if there is any considerable force
behind it, the medulla is paralyzed and death is instan-
taneous."
He let his terms sink in and then condescendingly
explained.
"To put it in plain language, a plexus is a center or
a network of nerves, and the cervical plexus supplies
the medulla or lower part of the brain in just the same


MR. SULLIVAN TAKES HOLD 55
way that a main cable supplies a central telephone
exchange that connects all the outlying stations. So
that if the main cable is destroyed, the central office
is useless and thus no messages can be sent out or re-
ceived from any of these outlying stations. In the
brain the stations controlled by the cervical plexus in
turn control the functions of the body which are neces-
sary to life, such as the respiratory organs, and so on.
Consequently when the main cable or plexus is de-
stroyed, or paralyzed, then the functions necessary to
life stop, and life necessarily stops also. Do you follow
me?"
"I guess so. Some one biffed him over the head and
he died right off.”
“Excellent, Sullivan.” The doctor smiled like a lead-
ing man taking his tenth curtain call.
"But almost any one or anything might have done
it?"
"Correct. In fact, it might easily have been done
by the heel of a man's or a woman's hand. There is
no evidence to the contrary.”
"You don't think he was poisoned by eating them
sardines?"
"It is possible, but I don't believe it. If you care
to look closely, you will find a bruise on the very spot
I've been trying to tell you about.”
"Humpf,” Sullivan grunted. “Well, what time do
you think he was killed?”.
"I can't tell you exactly, of course. All this talk


56 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
about a doctor's viewing a body and saying "The de-
ceased has been deceased for so many hours, so many
minutes and so many split seconds' is all just a lot of
utter tosh. When I looked at him I judged he had
been dead since, well, say a little after half past four
to perhaps ten minutes or so after five. That is the
best I can do for you as medical examiner, Slough,
and I don't think any one could tell you much more
about it than that.”
The doctor thrust his hands in his pockets with an air
of finality.
"Isn't there one single thing in this place,” Sullivan
asked pleadingly, "that might have been used to kill
him with?”
"There are mighty few objects that couldn't have
been used. And I doubt whether you could tell the
exact weapon with a microscope or pictures or anything
else used in the average case. The weapon might have
been the tennis racquet yonder; it might have been a
chair leg. I can't tell.”
Sullivan removed his helmet. His bald head gleamed
in the lamplight.
"In all my years on the force," he said plaintively,
"I never saw a murder before that you couldn't tell a
lot about by the weapon. And here you can't tell the
weapon even, you say."
"You may find out,” said Betsey encouragingly.
“You'll plain have to,” said the doctor forcefully.
“That's what we elected you sheriff for. We scarcely


58 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
Mike and Sullivan and the doctor ransacked the
cabin but they were unable to find any hammer.
"Perhaps it's outside somewhere," I suggested.
Hunter took his powerful pocket light and prowled
around outside in the sand and among the beach grass
and bayberry bushes.
But not one trace of it did any one find.


CHAPTER IV
BILL AND THE SARDINES
SULLIVAN looked gleefully at the doctor. “Could
a hammer have done it?”.
Reynolds nodded wearily. “It could have.”
The sheriff smiled. “Well, that's one thing to the
good then."
"But I don't think it did, Slough. It would have
crushed the skull unless whoever wielded it used the
handle to strike the blow. And you don't as a general
thing hold a hammer that way. Usually you hold it by
the handle and strike with the head.”
· The sheriff threw his helmet on the floor and made
disgusted noises in his throat. "Cripes!” was his only
audible comment.
"What about the sardine tin?” I asked. “Do you
think that that had anything to do with the murder?”
Idly Sullivan picked it up and examined it. A light
spread over his face. He looked like a cat who had
swallowed a canary and who on the whole was finding
it rather pleasant. I expected some startling revela-
tion, but instead he asked abruptly if we had seen any
one around the cabin from half past four to quarter
after five.
“Why,” Betsey began.
59


60 . THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"What is it, Miss Betsey?”
“Nothing. Really nothing. I was just thinking."
And I knew what it was for I had been thinking
the very same thing myself.
"Did you see any one around the cabin then?”
She looked at me appealingly. I nodded for her
to continue, as the fact was bound to become known.
"It's nothing, really, only that Bill Porter was there
this afternoon about that time."
"Was, was he? Any one else see him?”
“We all did," I said.
“See any one else around there?”
"Not that I know of," I answered, "unless Olga
saw some one. And that would have been long before
the time of the murder." I explained that you could
see the cabin only from the kitchen window.
"Any of you speak with Bill?”
"I did," Betsey said, "I met him at the foot of the
hill as I was going up to town."
"Did he say anything about Sanborn then?”
"Well, yes. Yes, he did.”
“What did he say?” Then, as she hesitated, “You
know you got to tell me.”
"He didn't say very much. Only that he was going
to pay a formal call on that Sanborn lad.' He seemed
a little upset about something. Of course it may sound
ominous when I tell about it now, but I'm sure he's got
nothing to do with it.”
"Did he come into the cottage afterward?"


BILL AND THE SARDINES 61
"No," I said, "he didn't.”
“Strange, wasn't it? Don't he usually drop in when
he's over this way?”
I admitted that he usually did.
“Now, Miss Whitsby, how long did he stay over to
Sanborn's while he was paying this call?”
"I couldn't say. I didn't see him leave.”
“Dot might have,” Betsey suggested. “Miss Cram,
who is visiting me," she explained for Sullivan's bene-
fit. “She was out on the porch then.”
"We'll send Mike over to ask her.”
"Please don't," I interposed. "She's taken this
thing very hard, and in all probability she's in bed by
now. I can tell you that he went before five o'clock
because I noticed his car was gone at that time."
"Any of you seen Bill to-night?”.
"No, we haven't. He wasn't at the movies, I think
you said, Betsey?"
She nodded.
“None of you seen him since?"
I was beginning to resent his questions. “Come, Mr.
Sullivan,” I said, "how should you expect us to know
about Bill Porter's comings and goings?”
"In the name of all that's reasonable, Slough,” the
doctor added, "why are you so anxious to find out
about Bill anyway? Surely you're not such an arrant
chump as to try to pin this affair on him?”
"I guess,” Sullivan drawled, "I got a right to pin
this on any one I want. Why shouldn't I suspect Bill?”


62 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
UN.
"Man alive, you're crazy. Why should Bill Porter
want to do away with Sanborn?”
“Two good reasons I know of. Number one,” he
held up his forefinger, "number one: isn't Sanborn run-
ning around after his girl?”
"That's a lie," Betsey told him hotly. “I am not
Bill Porter's girl, as you call it. And Dale Sanborn
wasn't running after me.”
“That so? Well, Miss Betsey Whitsby, you'd have a
hard time trying to make any court think differently
about it. And number two," he held up his second
finger, "number two: this afternoon in the presence of a
reliable witness who told my son who told me, he threat-
ened to kill Sanborn the next time he saw him."
To say that we were startled would be an utter false-
hood. We were completely overcome, downright flab-
bergasted. I could feel my chin droop, and every one
but Sullivan and Mike had wide open mouths like so
many hungry robins in a nest.
“What?" I found my voice. "I don't believe a
single word of it."
"It's true," said Mike excitedly. "Lonzo Bangs told
me. Sanborn run over Bill's dog and left him lying
right in the middle of the road. He didn't even stop
to see how badly hurt he was. And you know Bill
sets a lot of store by that dog."
I knew that Bill had the same affection for Brutus,
more commonly known as Boots, that I had for my cat.
And Boots was no ordinary dog. He had cost a thou-


BILL AND THE SARDINES 63
sand odd dollars and he had as many medals as any
wonder dog in the moving pictures.
"And,” said Sullivan, “Bill's got the Porter temper.
I guess you know that. He just probably let it loose.
You can't say that the Porter temper ain't a temper.
You heard how one time in town meeting he picked up
a bench and threw it at that Portygee Pete Barradio
who wanted to increase the taxes so as the town would
tar the road that leads out to his dance hall at the Neck.
And they's plenty of other times that Bill rose up and
walloped people. And he knows all about that Jap
way of wrestlin', too, that the doctor said might be
how Sanborn got hit. I seen him do some of it myself,
getting a sort of toe hold on a man who's on top. Of
course, he don't stay mad long, and he's always awful
sorry afterward, but you can't deny he's got a terrible
temper all the samey."
None of us attempted to deny it. The Porter temper
was legend.
"Yes,” Sullivan went on, “he's got two good reasons.
And I'll tell you something else.”
He stuck his thumbs in his broad leather belt and
held forth, much in the manner of the doctor. I
marveled at the effect a group of people had on the aver-
age man. I have never seen one of them who did
not swell slightly when he had the opportunity to speak
to more than four people who had no ostensible reason
for stopping him.
"I'll tell you one thing I learned from Captain Kin-


64 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
ney," Sullivan continued. "One murder is a lot like
another murder, and one murderer is a lot like another
murderer. Lie detectors and all the newfangled things
they use to-day may be all very good enough in their
way, but murders that happen ain't so complicated
as murders you hear about. In books they's always
a lot of things that point to a man's doing the killing,
and then there's always some one else who did it all
the time. Now, I never knew of a killer who was
caught that didn't leave some track behind him. The
reason they all get caught is because they do just that.
There was things that pointed to 'em and the things
didn't lie none."
I wondered if Sullivan was quite such a fool as I
had thought. He was not as eloquent as the doctor,
but he was far more earnest and every whit as logical.
"Now, you take this sardine tin,” He held it up.
"You see that piece of wrapper that's still on the bot-
tom? It may be too oily for you to make anything out
of it, but I can tell a lot just from looking at it. That's
nothing Sanborn ever bought for himself. That's the
thing in this case that the murderer left behind him."
He lowered his voice impressively. “This morning a
man bought a dozen tins of sardines from the store
and took 'em away with him. This tin here is one of
the dozen Bill Porter, the one I'm talking about, bought
himself."
"What?" I ejaculated. "How can you tell?”
“For one thing, Miss Whitsby, they're Hadley's sar-


BILL AND THE SARDINES
65
dines and they're imported by just one house in the
United States. That's S. S. Pierce's in Boston. And
we're the only people on Cape Cod who carry them,
and we carry them only for Bill Porter. They ain't
sardines as everybody can afford to buy. They cost
seventy-five cents a tin.” For a moment his tone was
that of a grocery clerk. “Seventy-five cents the seven-
and-a-quarter-ounce tin.”
"But see here," I said decisively, "we buy those sar-
dines ourselves. We get ours direct from Boston, and
I'm perfectly sure at least a dozen other summer people
here do too."
"You can tell me a lot, Miss Whitsby, about a good
many things, I'll admit. But you can't tell me much
about sardines. Especially these sardines here. These
have got the Pierce trade-mark on the bottom. See
that? And the number beside it, 48, is our number. It
means we're agents. And this wrapper, if you look
close, is green and white. Not red and white like they
used to be. I noticed it myself when I looked at the
shipment that came in just yesterday."
"Well," said Emma, "suppose you did sell Bill those
sardines. Suppose Bill did threaten to kill Sanborn.
Suppose he came here. You can't prove that he was
the murderer, can you?”
"Bill he can have a thousand stories, he can have
a million if he wants, all claiming that he didn't do this,"
Sullivan answered. “But you can't get away from
facts. This afternoon at two-thirty Sanborn ran over


66
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
Bill's dog. Asey Mayo had to shoot it. Bill he found
out about it a few minutes after four, because it wasn't
much later than half past four that Mike told me about
this threat. He said he was going to see Sanborn; you
saw him come. Sanborn is found killed afterward, but
the doc says he was killed during part of the time
that Bill was here. We find he left his sardine tin be-
hind him. Now, that's all straight, ain't it?"
“Yes," the doctor began, "but— "
“But nothing, begging your pardon, Doc. That's
what Captain Kinney used to call a clear record of con-
necting facts, ain't it? Bill can lie some, but it's going
to take an awful lot of lying and a couple of slick
lawyers to make people think he didn't do it.”
“Do you think he did it?” Betsey asked heatedly.
"It's perfectly O. K. with me if you all want to think
he got struck down by a bolt shot out of the heavens
that just happened to land on the base of his skull, if you
want to. Or you can think it's a death ray, whatever
that is, or it could be anything at all. But Captain Kin-
ney of the old second precinct always used to say that he
for one was content to think a thing out like the rest of
humanity when the facts was in front of him, and leave
flights of fancy-like notions to them as didn't have their
duty to do. I don't know a lot about queer blunt
instruments that the doc talks about, but I know a sar-
dine tin when I see it, an' I can put two and two together
with any one.”
“What about the hammer?” I asked.


BILL AND THE SARDINES 67
S
"Well, I guess a little searching will turn that up in
the vicinity of Mister Bill Porter. It's my opinion he
did this with that Jap trick. But if we find the hammer,
we'll know different. The doc don't think it did the
job, but I can't see but what the handle of a hammer
would be as easy a way to hit a man as the head of it
would. Course you don't always pick a hammer up
by the head, but if Bill was in a temper as he probably
was, he might just as well of done it that way. Yes, I
guess that hammer had something to do with this kill-
ing. If it didn't, why ain't it here? Why? Why take
it away if it ain't got anything to do with the mur-
der?"
"Why,” I asked with some asperity, "leave a sardine
tin behind and take away a hammer?”
Sullivan told us why at some length. “There was
a man once in Boston when I was on the force who left
a body all covered over with things that pointed to him
doing the murder. We arrested him. He got a shrewd
lawyer who got up in court and said that the man had
been the victim of a conspiracy, the one we'd arrested
had, I mean. That lawyer said that no man in his right
senses would leave a body all covered with clues and
that it was some one who was trying to get the man
we'd arrested into trouble. We all sort of agreed with
him after he'd finished. But when we found another
body all covered with clues that led to the same man
again, we got busy. He'd done both of them murders
and left things lying there on purpose so's he could
nan


68
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
say it was the work of an enemy. I told Bill Porter
about it once myself.”
“Why," the doctor inquired mildly, "don't you get
Bill up here and ask him a few questions? No doubt he
could clear the matter up."
Sullivan shrugged his shoulders. "Hunter, will you
go up to the Porter bouse and get him and bring him
here?"
Hunter grinded. "Sure. It's the big house with the
gold dome, isn't it?"
We heard the chug chugging of his motor-cycle as
he sped away.
"Couldn't this have been done by a tramp or some
one passing by who wanted to rob him?" I asked.
"I don't think that's possible," the doctor answered.
“There is his cigarette case, and his watch is still there,
and here," he took a wallet from his surgical bag, “is
a bill-fold with about two hundred dollars in it which
I took from his inner pocket. It doesn't look that way
at all.”
“Will there be an inquest?" I asked.
“Oh, yes. An inquest.” The doctor considered.
“Well, I don't think there's the slightest chance of this
being an accident. It's clearly a murder. An inquest
would be more or less of a formality and we have thirty
days to do it in. We can wait a few days. There's no
need to hurry things right now."
The sheriff agreed. “That's right, Doc. I want to
take a look about for that hammer. And I'm going to


BILL AND THE SARDINES 69
arrest Bill Porter on suspicion, and I'll take him up-
county for an indictment."
"Can he do it?" I asked the doctor. “Can Bill be
arrested by this man?”
"I'm afraid he not only can but that he will be.”
There was a period of uncomfortable silence while we
all pondered of the fate of Bill. We turned toward the
door as Hunter's motor-cycle roared outside.
Hunter, chewing gum happily, entered alone.
"Where's Bill?” Sullivan demanded.
"Your bird's flew the coop,” said Hunter. "There's
no one there at the house at all. I banged on the door
and then opened it and went in. There wasn't a soul in
the house at all.”
"No one, not even Asey Mayo?”.
"No, sir. There's nobody there. And it looked like
they'd left in a tearing big hurry, too. There were lots
of things sort of strewn around.”
Sullivan smiled. “You can add to that list of facts I
gave you that when a man who threatens another man
with murder disappears, and when the man he's threat-
ened is found killed, you don't have to look very far to
find the killer. Mike, you take the car and go up and
phone to the state police to stop his car. Describe the
new one and give the number of the old hack he drives
around. I don't think he'd use it but he might. Then
telephone the lighthouses and the harbor lightkeeper
and ask 'em to keep an eye out for that shiny speed boat
of his. Telephone Cousin Mike in Boston, too. He'll


THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
know what to do about looking over the harbor there.
We'll get that guy even it be spends a million or two
trying to get away. Have you got all that straight?”
Mike nodded.
"Go along, then, and III stay here and look around
a little more for the bamner till you get back."
The boy rushed out. "In bet," the doctor commented
under his breath, "that he forgets to put a nickel in the
telephone slot." Aloud he said, “I suppose I might
as well take the rest of his small personal belongings
and get along home."
"Il'hat about the body?” Sullivan asked.
"I can't very well take it along with me, and Simp-
kins the undertaker has gone up to Boston with the
body of the Downey woman who was drowned in the
surf. He'll be back carly to-morrow though. We'll leave
the body here to-night, and you or Hunter will have
to stay here till Simpkins can take charge of it for me.
That will be all right, won't it?"
"I guess so," said Sullivan dubiously,
"It will have to be," said the doctor sharply. “Now,
let me know what turns up." He turned to us. "I'm
sorry I can't offer you ladies a lift over to the cottage,
but my car isn't much larger in seating capacity than
yours.” He chuckled amiably at his own little joke
and left.
Betsey put her car up, and Emma and I walked
slowly home.
“Was Dale's car in the garage," I asked her when


BILL AND THE SARDINES
we caught up to her, “I mean, when you went to the
movies?”
“I suppose it must have been. I thought he'd gone
to supper. I'd left the bug by the side of the house,
and I didn't look into the garage at all. Snoodles, isn't
this perfectly awful?”
"It certainly is,” I told her fervently.
In the house we found only Olga up. Dot, she in-
formed us, had gone to bed.
"You know,” Betsey remarked, “I can't just under-
stand why that girl went to pieces this way. She was
the coolest person in the dormitory when it caught on
fire. And when she was on the Pearsons' yacht last year
and it nearly foundered off Hatteras, they said she was
the only one who kept her head at all. It's strange
that a girl who's been through fire and flood, so to speak,
should act like this.”
I told her of Emma's suggestion that there might
have been some attachment between her and Sanborn.
"And,” I said, "she didn't give you much information
when you asked her this afternoon how long she'd
known him.”
"Yes, I noticed at the time that she was unusually
reticent. But things do look bad for old Bill, don't
they?”
Emma stifled a yawn. "They won't look any worse
to-morrow. Or is it to-day? It is, and well on to
Saturday, too. Prudence, ordinarily yours is a most
peaceful household and I enjoy it. It rests me to be


72
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
with you. But I have been more heated since I left
Boston this morning than if I had stayed at home and
knitted on my afghan out in the sun. I am completely
exhausted and I make no bones about it. I am going
to bed this very instant. You two had better do the
same."
She trudged heavily up the stairs, and Betsey and I
followed.
I hoped that after I got to bed I might have one of
those flashes of inspiration so common to would be
crime solvers. But after I had undressed and washed
some of the traces of Mike Sullivan's flash-light powder
from my smudged face, I fell into bed and was prac-
tically asleep the minute my head touched the pillow
But I remember the dream I had that night. A
yellow cat that looked enormously like Dot was running
after a sardine that scurried on its fins like a mouse.
Other cats appeared, joined in the chase. One nearly
had the sardine, but just in time the silly-looking fish
leaped in between the covers of a purple book.
I awoke for a second to find Ginger gleefully ex-
ercising his catnip mouse on the foot of my bed.


CHAPTER V
ENTER ASEY MAYO
OLGA woke me with difficulty at seven in the morning.
"Mister Bill's Asey wants to see you."
I dressed hurriedly and went down-stairs to find Asey
Mayo sitting bolt upright in a steamer chair on the
porch. Asey was the kind of man everybody expects to
find on Cape Cod and never does. He was by my
reckoning about sixty years old, because I am fifty, and
I knew he had been "voting age," as they say in the
town, when I was a girl visiting my relatives. No one
seeing him for the first time could tell whether he was
thirty-five or seventy. His long lean face was so tanned
from exposure that the lines and wrinkles did not show.
His mouth was wide, with a humorous twist about the
corners, and his deep-set blue eyes twinkled discon-
certingly.
He usually walked with his shoulders hunched and
his head thrust forward. As he moved his worn cordu-
roy trousers and flannel shirt flopped as though anxious
to catch up with the rest of his spare frame. An old
broad-brimmed Stetson set at an angle on his head gave
him a strangely rakish look. He almost invariably
chewed tobacco, and that habit coupled with his trick
of pronouncing no more syllables of a word than were


74 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
absolutely necessary, made him quite unintelligible to
those who didn't know him.
Although he called himself a mechanic, he had taken
a turn at nearly every trade. As steward, cook or
ordinary seaman he had sailed over the seven seas in
every type of ship. He had made his first voyage
on one of the last of the old clipper ships, and
before he had settled down in the town he had been
mate of a tramp steamer. Under Bill's grandfather
he had built carriages; under Bill's father he had
learned about automobiles. I doubt if he had ever had
more than a fleeting glimpse of the inside of a school-
room, but his knowledge of the world and its inhabit-
ants was vastly superior to that of the average man.
The town cast a critical eye upon him because he
belonged to no church and rarely attended any service
outside of the Christmas Eve celebration, when he went
and lustily sang hymns. He was neither a Mason, a
Bison nor an Elk.
But the townsfolk knew that when a garageman pro
nounced a car fit for the junk heap, Asey Mayo could
rejuvenate it. Shortly after we had come to the Cape
Betsey's tiny car had stopped. The local mechanic
scratched his head and said that he was dummed if he
could do anything. A man brought from Boston con-
fessed that the trouble was too deep-seated even for
him. At Bill's suggestion Asey had looked the car
over. Nonchalantly he prodded a wire here, a nut there.
He tinkered with a wrench, tapped with a screw-driver.


ENTER ASEY MAYO
75
"Now then," he said to Betsey, "start her up.”
Betsey started her up. The car purred happily.
“What was the matter, Asey?” Bill asked.
"Matter?” said Asey. “Wa'n't nothin' much the
matter 'cept the whangdoodle on the thingumbob wa'n't
touchin' the whatchamacallit.”
His speech would be impossible for a student of
phonetics to record on paper. It resembled no other
dialect in the world. Let it suffice to say that he never
sounded a final g or t. His r was the ah of New Eng-
land. His a was so flat that as Betsey said, you couldn't
get under it with a crowbar.
He greeted me as though it were his custom to ap-
pear on my porch at seven every morning of his life.
"H'lo. Wake you up, did I?”.
“Good morning, Asey.” I noticed that the humorous
twist was gone from his mouth. "Have you heard about
all this? And did Bill do it? And where is he?”.
“Yup. Nope. In the pillory,” said he composedly.
"In the what?”
"In the pillory, and 'twas lucky 'twasn't the bilboes.”
“But why?"
"Ain't no jail.”
“Perhaps," I said, "you had better begin at the be-
ginning and tell me everything.”
He drew a long breath. “Well, Sanborn he run
Boots down. Did it a purpose. I had t shoot him.
Bill come home an’ found out an' got mad. Don't
blame him. I was myself. An' he said he was goin' to


76
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
kill Sanborn an' before I could get to stop him he was
off. He come up here an' asked Sanborn what the hell,
I mean— "
“That's all right. What did Sanborn say?"
"He said he didn't run over any dog, but if Bill said
that he had he'd make rest'ution. An' he took out a
ten-dollar note an' passes it to Bill. Course Bill got
madder an' left. An' after he come home I picks up the
glasses an' sees some one out fiddlin' with the lobster
pots I'd just set out, an' so we took that speed boat o'
Bill's an’ went out after 'em. Bill'd been usin' the boat
that afternoon an' like a fool he hadn't put any gas in
her, so by the time we borrered gas from a late quo-
haugger comin' in from the beds, we'd lost the tide an'
had t stay out in the harbor all night in that there
mahogany contraption. If we'd used a rowboat like I
wanted to we'd been all right now. Anyways, we come
in hour or so ago an' there was Slough Sullivan all
dressed up in his reg'mentals waitin' to greet us. He
up and 'rested Bill for killin' Sanborn. That was the
first we got to know about it. An' then he went an’
put Bill in the pillory.”
“What pillory? And why?” Betsey, who never rose
before half past ten, stood in the doorway, sleepy-
looking but completely dressed.
"Well, Bill said he hadn't done it, an' Slough he
went on about Bill's threatenin' to kill Sanborn an'
something about a sardine tin, an' seems like as if he
had 't all doped out that Bill he was the murderer. Bill


ENTER ASEY MAYO
77
said all right, if Slough wanted to 'rest him, he was
welcome to do it, but what was he goin' to do with him
after he had 'rested him. Slough says he's goin' to
take him up-county an' get him indicted. An' Bill says
he can't on account of it's bein' Saturday. So Slough
says, I'll put you in jail then.”
Asey smiled. “We ain't had no jail here for twenty-
thutty years, an' Bill told him so. An' he says that
the best thing Sullivan can do is to take his word he
won't try to go off anywheres an' run away.”
He stopped short and sniffed the air. "If that's
coffee I smell I think I'd kind of like to have some.
You go get me a cup, Betsey, like a good girl. I won't
go on till you get back.”
Betsey brought out a tray and the three of us sat
and drank coffee as casually as though we were guests
at a garden party. Emma and Dot probably had cause
to laugh as they came out and saw us, though at the
moment I didn't see anything very funny about drink-
ing coffee with what amounted to a hired man at that
hour of the morning. Briefly we acquainted them with
the gist of Asey's remarks.
"Well," continued Asey, “Sullivan he couldn't see
that at all. Says he, you'll be takin' that shiny new
car of yours an' beatin' it away as soon's I leave you;
else you'll run off in your speed boat.”
“ 'Humpf,' says Bill, 'how 'bout givin' me a pair of
handcuffs an'a ball an' chain? Or maybe,' says he real
sarcastic-like, 'maybe you could use the pillory that


THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
they put up for the ter-ter— 'oh, that three-hundredth
birthday party that the town had.”
We snickered.
"But Sullivan don't see anything hum'rous in that.
He thinks it's a fine idea, so he ups and does.”
"You mean to say that he put Bill Porter in the
pillory for every one to see and throw things at?"
"Yup,” said Asey, helping himself to another biscuit.
“Your girl makes real good biscuits, Miss Prue, an'
I know a lot about biscuits. Yup. That's what Sulli-
van did, all right. Only I don't guess that there'll be
any throwin'. I'm sure of that. I left Joe Bump there
for to watch out.”
"What good will the village idiot do?” Betsey de-
manded.
“Well, I give him that long whip Jimmy got out in
Californy. Joe Bump knows how to slash it so's 'twill
cut paper at fifty feet. An' I made a sign an' stuck it
up sayin' that the first feller t’ start anything would get
a feel of that lash. An' I gave Joe Bump five dollars
an' told him what tdo. For less'n five dollars Joe'd
cut the King of England into ribbons.”
We laughed in spite of ourselves.
"What about Bill?" I asked. "How is he?"
"Real chipper, Bill seemed. Only he don't feel that
way one bit. I left him settlin' how he was t live till
Monday mornin'. That's when Sullivan says he's goin'
t' take him up to the court, but I kinder think he'll take
Bill out sooner'n he thinks. Bill says he wants an


ENTER ASEY MAYO
79
umberill for to keep the sun off, an' I left some money
at the dog-cart to see he got fed.” Asey chuckled. “He
was kind of worrin' 'bout sanitary arrangements when I
left him, but I reckon necessity'll show him some way
out.”
“But isn't he terribly uncomfortable?” I asked.
“The boy who stood in it for the ‘Punishments' tableau
at the pageant had a stiff neck for days afterward."
"Bill's taller, an' I stuck a couple boards under his
feet. No, he wa'n't sufferin' none."
"But what are we going to do?”
“Well, Miss Prue, Bill told me to come to you an'
tell you everything, an' he said you an' me was t' find
out who done this by Monday mornin'. You see, if
Sullivan gets that crazy boy indicted, an' I don't see
no reason why he won't less'n we do something, there's
goin' ľbe an awful lot of trouble to get him out of
this. Course we all don't think he did it, but I guess
most every one else will judge by 'pearances. Folks
most usually do. An' we just got to get the one who
did it before anything more happens to Bill.”
"Did you let Jimmy know?"
“Yup. Sent him a telegram on the way up."
"Asey ought to know about the sardines,” Emma
suggested. “Whether they were the ones that Bill
bought or not.”
"I'm 'fraid they are, all right. They's only 'leven
tins in the pantry now, an' it says twelve on the bill.
Whatever other faults Slough Sullivan's got, he gives


80
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
full measure in sardines as well as everything else, flour
or butter or what all. Every one's got to have some
redeemin' feature about him, an' that's Slough's. He's
honest even if he is kind of dull. If he says he give
Bill twelve tins, he did. Bill he told Slough that when
he set out t commit a murder he didn't usually eat no
sardines on the scene o' the crime, before or after, let
alone carryin' the things with him an' then leavin' the
can behind.”
“What did Sullivan say to that?”
“Told some story about a feller in Boston who'd
left things behind so as to make people think some one
else had made him the goat in a murder. Said that was
what Bill'd done. Said it didn't make no difference to
him when 'r if 'r how 'r where Bill ate or didn't eat 'em.
All he cared about was the tin bein' there."
"I wonder how they got under the table, then, if
Bill didn't bring them,” Betsey remarked.
“Bill swears he didn't. I guess likely it was spirits,
but most likely two-legged ones. That's just one of
the things Miss Prue and me has got to find out.”
"But," I wanted to know, "can Sullivan do a thing
like this?”
"You mean, can he put Bill in the pillory? He has.
No one can't accuse him of not gettin' results. He's
got him secured by the neck an' wrists."
"Couldn't we get detectives?"
"Sure we could. I asked Bill if we hadn't better,
but he said no, that they'd get here when they felt like


ENTER ASEY MAYO
81
it and then they'd take a couple of weeks to get the
lay of the land and find out all about the local scandals
an' by the time they got anywhere Bill'd be behind solid
steel bars.”
“Does he expect us to track down whoever did this?
Is the boy crazy?"
"Nope, he's got sort of batty notions, but I shouldn't
go so far 's to call him plumb brainless. I guess you ’n’
me can dig out facts as easy as any one else. Sullivan
he found what he thought was the murderer in a hour
or so. We got about two whole days to start in an' find
the real crim'nal. An' i'd say offhand that we'd got
as good brains as he has. That reminds me. I thought
of one thing a'ready. By to-night this'll be head-lines
in every paper there is. It happened too late to get into
the mornin' ones, but it'll be all over the place to-night.
So I brought something along with me.”
He went out to the side of the cottage where he had
parked Bill's new car. From the rumble seat he ex-
tracted six great coils of rope, an ax and a bundle of
poles that looked suspiciously as though they had
started out in life by holding up beans.
"What,” Emma asked, "is all that for? A mass
hanging?"
“No'm. I'm goin' to string it around this cottage
here, on account of what if I don't you'll be sleepin'
trippers all over your front piazza. They's goin' to be
plenty of people down this way before the day is over
an' not all of 'em is goin' to stay down there on the beach


82
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
road an’ look up, even though that's where they b’long.
You all better come an' help me.”
We felt foolish, but we helped him string a cordon of
rope about the cottage. While we worked I asked
Asey why he was using the new roadster.
"Lucinda's a good car, but she's temp’rmental. I
got a feelin' we're goin' to have some ridin' to do, you
an' me, before we get through this here job, an' you
might's well ride in style an' comfort.”
"I'm glad you think we're going to get through with
it,” I remarked. “You seem very sure.”
"Well, might's well be a little confident. Every one
can't get to Corinth, but you can read the signposts, as
the feller said."
"Why did Bill pick out you and me to get to the root
of this matter?”
"He 'lowed as how you an' me were the only people
he feels sure didn't do it.”
I reflected on that and commented on Asey's fore-
sight in the matter of the ropes.
"Well, ounce o prevention's worth a pound o cure.
Besides, they ain't no sense in a pack of women folks
bein' bothered by a lot of old men with comic remarks
ť make an’ women in khaki pants starin', an' a lot o'
kids throwin' papers around.”
“But you were clever to think of it,” I said fatuously.
"Humpf. Nothin' but common sense. Common
sense, Miss Prue, that's my maxim.”
For the first time I realized he had been calling me by


ENTER ASEY MAYO
83
the name the family had used long ago. It had been a
good twenty-five years since any one had shortened
Prudence into Prue. I stopped my wondering into the
past.
“What shall we do first, Asey?”
"Well, I cal'late we're goin' to find out more about
this Sanborn man. Then we'll find out more about that
sardine tin. Then,” he lowered his voice and jerked
his head toward the other three, "then we're goin' to
look into matters nearer home. Don't look so amazed
like. Re-fined people do murders sometimes. Only
we got to learn more about Sanborn first. We'll do
that this mornin', I reckon, an' that might maybe give
us something to go on.”
"How do you know we'll find out anything about
Sanborn?"
"Easy as pie. Bill telegraphed that Harlow boy in
Cambridge yesterday mornin' before anything hap-
pened at all. He was sort of cur'us to find out about
him on general principles. Yup, we got a lot to do
to-day. We just got to find out everything by Monday
bright an' early."
I looked at him quickly. He was perfectly serious.
There was even a certain finality about the way he made
that statement, as though he had no doubt whatever
in his mind but what we would. I was beginning to
understand why Bill depended to such an extent on this
tall raw-boned man. Was it Shaw or Wells who said of
New Englanders that they were “fine and bleak”? Cer-


84
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
tainly there was a fineness in Asey which I had never
suspected.
“You think so?”
“Sure, Miss Prue. I seen the Porters in scrapes
afore this. They always seem to get themselves out
all right.”
"You mean, I suppose, that you always get them out,"
I remarked.
Asey smiled. “Most usually I have help. Now, you
an'me is goin' to start out."
“Start out where?" asked Betsey, coming up. “Can
we go too?"
"Nope. Ain't no need for you to come trapsin'
around to-day. You go up-town an' every man-jack will
start pointin' an' talkin' about you, an' you might's well
stay here."
Accordingly I stepped into the front seat of the
gleaming low-hung roadster, and Mr. Mayo and I drove
off. Emma watched us with a twinkle in her eye. I
knew she was thinking of the wager we had made the
night before.
"First we'll go see Bill. Then to the post-office an'
then to the telegraph office, an' then we'll interview Mrs.
Howe,” Asey planned out loud. "Sanborn was probably
there yesterday. Say, did Betsey's friend Dot or your
friend Mrs. Manton ever know Sanborn?”
“Dot did, but not Emma.”
“She know he was goin' to be here?”
“She said she didn't.”


ENTER ASEY MAYO
85
“Hm. Did you ask 'em down or did they wangle an
invitation off you?”
“We asked them," I said indignantly. “Why?”
“Oh, I just thought that this here hot weather might
give any one a real nice chance to ask themselves where
they knew Sanborn was goin' to be if they had any
idees about killin' him."
I had not thought of that. “But," I objected, "no
one knew that Sanborn was going to be here. He came
to town from the Chatham Bars Inn on Tuesday, in-
tending to spend just the night, at least that was what
he told Betsey on Wednesday when she met him. Then
he decided he liked the place so much that he made
up his mind to stay. The hot weather didn't begin till
Tuesday or Wednesday. And how would any one know,
besides?"
“That new proprietor of the inn has flossy notions."
Asey bit off a chunk of chewing tobacco. "He puts all
the names of folks who stay there into the papers. If
Sanborn came on Tuesday, then it was in Wednesday's
paper, and the heat-wave talk began in Wednesday's
paper too. Didn't any one ask if they could come to
see you for the week-end?”.
“We got nine telegrams," I informed him.
“Kind of a lot, wasn't it?".
“Yes, but nothing out of the ordinary. Once last
year we got sixteen."
“Who was they from?"
"I really don't remember all of them. Betsey might."


86 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“Any one you remember as being sort of strange?"
“Why, no.”
“Wasn't any from any one who you didn't know very
well or didn't expect to hear from?”
"I'm getting old and doddering, Asey. Yes, there
were two that we particularly noticed.” I told him of
our system of drawing lots and how we seemed unable
to get any combination other than John Kurth and
Maida Waring. I explained about their divorce and
subsequent estrangement.
"May be a little far-fetched, but we'll look into the
matter later. Can't never tell in things like this how
important coinc'dences are.”
He turned the car on to the strip of state highway
that served as the main street of Wellfleet. Both sides
were lined with the typical collection of small-town
emporiums. There were ice-cream parlors, the grocery
where Sullivan presided, a news-stand, a bowling alley
and the inevitable gasoline stations. Opposite that
focal point, the post-office, was an open lot. It had been
on this spot that the town had given what Asey called
its three-hundredth birthday party. Here the pillory
and stocks and bilboes still stood.
The street was unduly crowded and Asey gave a dis-
play of steering which would have done credit to any
New York taxi driver. He drew up in front of the
post-office and coaxed the car into a parking space
which I should have considered inadequate even for
Betsey's vehicle.


88
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
went away satisfied I'd break down and confess all by
noon. Said if I'd confess he'd take me down. He thinks
this'll bring me into a repentant frame of mind.”
"Had anything to eat?"
“Yes. Joe here fed me a hot dog and a glass of milk.
I'm going to have a Western sandwich for a light lunch
soon. A man in my position gets hungry. Very hungry.
Have you found out anything yet?”
Asey shook his head. "Nope.”
"Well, you two had better get going if you want to
see this worthy young man without shackles and a stiff
neck for the rest of his life. It's all up to you.”
"Don't you worry now," said Asey anxiously. “We'll
fix you up all right. Come along, Miss Prue.”
"Hey,” Bill called after us. "Who'd you suppose I
saw going by here a minute ago? He wasn't looking
this way, but I howled after him. I guess he didn't
hear me though.”
"Whom,” I accented the pronoun slightly, "did you
see?”
“There, there, Snoodles. Whom. Well, it was that
tall dark fellow who used to be Maida Waring's hus-
band. The one who went to school with Jimmy. What
was his name?"
"Kurth, you mean?”
“Yes, Johnny Kurth.”


CHAPTER VI
COMPLICATIONS
"WHAT do you think about Kurth's being here?"
I asked as we walked across to the post-office.
“Seems kind of funny, don't it? He didn't tell you
he was comin' anyway, did he?”
"No, he didn't. And it seems strange that after
asking to come down he shouldn't let us know, or at
least come and call on us, don't you think?”.
"Seems so. Well, we'll have to wait a bit before we
go into that. Right now I don't want to go gettin'
mixed up."
He twirled the dials of Bill's mail-box and drew out
a letter. "Humpf. A special delivery stamp don't mean
one thing in this place. We'd ought to got that delivered
at the house last night.”
"Is it from Paul Harlow?"
"Yup, says so on the outside, anyways. S'pose we
take the car and read this down by the station. They
ain't so many people down there, an’ we can see if
there's any word from Jimmy besides.”
More than one curious glance was directed at us as
we got into the car, in itself an object of attention.
I heard whispers. "Look. Miss Prudence Whitsby.
There with Asey Mayo.”


90 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
I thought grimly that there was more going to be
discussed that day than the Sanborn affair and Bill
Porter's arrest. We stopped outside the telegraph office
in the station and Asey passed me the letter.
"Here, you read it out loud.”
“ Dear Cap'n, "_Bill had been known as the 'Cap'n'
throughout his college days.
"Your long winded telegram received," I read, "and
as per your instructions, I have spent several weary
hours tracking down the dirt on your pal Sanborn.
Couldn't find anything about any bird by that name in
any class from '18 to good old '22. Just as I was giv-
ing up in despair I met old man Kampfer of the eco.
department and I stopped him and asked if he'd known
of a Dale Sanborn who'd been around about that time.
"The old geezer blinked and said, 'Who?'
“I shouted at him. You know he's deaf in addition to
his other derangements. “Who's that,' says he, stick-
ing out his ear trumpet. 'No, I didn't know a David
Sanborn. Perhaps you mean David Schonbrun; he
was a brilliant boy. One of the cleverest and most in-
telligent undergraduates we ever had.'
"I pricked up my ears and the old gent chattered
along. Said I'd probably remember him by the name
of Red Ivan, and sure enough I did. I don't think you
would, because you didn't play about with that sort of
thing. The 'red' came from his leanings toward social-
ism and anarchism and all that, and Ivan was from
that song that's on the other side of the Frankie and
Johnnie record. Well, Red Ivan was always making


COMPLICATIONS
91
speeches about the downtrodden masses on a soap-box
and getting himself arrested in places like Lowell and
Lawrence for bawling about on strikes and one thing
and another. They used to claim he was all tied up
with Moscow, but most likely that was a lot of talk.
“ 'Poor lad,' says Kampfer, ‘he was killed in a strike
riot not long after he got out of college. He'd just got
out of a jail sentence too.'
"Well, I played a hunch. Those names were a lot
alike, so I asked the old fellow out for a beer. He
mopped up the stuff as fast as the boy could bring it,
and I pumped him with every swallow. Now this
Schonbrun sounded pretty much like your Sanborn ex-
cept that yours wore snappy clothes and didn't have a
mustache like this one. Kampfer says he came from
New York City, was born there and went to some city
high school. I made him take me around to the hovel
where he hangs out and get me a photo of the man in
question. He made me promise to give it back to him
as is, so don't go for to lose it or light your pipe with it.
This Schonbrun seemed to be a pet of the old man.
"Of course this man may not be the one you want,
but on the other hand, Kampfer might be mistaken
about his getting killed. Anyway you look at it, I
calls it good sleuthing, and I hereby put in an expense
account of ten beers at a quarter each. That is not
extortion as small beer comes high these days. What's
all the shooting about anyway?”
“The rest,” I concluded, "is only something about
coming up to the games this fall.”


92
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
Asey delved into the envelope and brought out a
snap-shot. He looked at it closely and passed it over
to me.
“What d'you think about it, now?”
I gazed at the faded picture of an earnest young man
in baggy clothes who was shaking one fist in the man-
ner of a curbstone orator. His hair was thick and
bushy and on his upper lip was a truly pugnacious
mustache.
“Doesn't look much like Sanborn to me," I com-
mented.
“Maybe not. But it is."
"I'd like to know what makes you think so."
“Well, you never saw him except in swell clothes
and without a mustache, and neither did I, for that.
An' we didn't see him 'cept he had his hair all slicked.
But it's him.”
“Elucidate."
"Huh? Well, his eyes an' nose an expression are
the same. See, he's evidently makin' a speech here.
Get that hand stuck up to bang something home? An’
see that glarey look? An' that angle to the way his
head's held? That was the way he looked yesterday
when he turned around after runnin' Boots down. Kind
of fanatic like.”
“That may be. But even so, this man was killed
in a strike riot."
"Maybe he was an’ maybe he wasn't. Restaurants
call fried flounder filly of sole, but it's flounder. They's


COMPLICATIONS
93
more’n one man in this world who's travelin' under a
different name. Maybe he was gettin' too far mixed up
in his line o' work an' thought it was a nice time to
have David Schonbrun die. They ain't a lot o' dif-
ference in them names, like Harlow says. But we can
make sure.”
"How?"
“Chap in Boston used to cook along of me on the
Amanda S. He works in the room on the Clarion
where they keep back numbers an' things. We'll tele-
graph him to see if he can find out about it for us an'
if it was a sure thing about his gettin' killed. It ought
to of been in a paper. An' I guess I'll send a wire to
another feller I know who works in City Hall some-
where, in New York. He can find out about the family
of this David Schonbrun an' if there was such a feller
anyway. We might as well do the thing up brown
while we're at it.”
He got out of the car. "Don't look so amazed-like,
Miss Prue. I picked up a lot of friends in my time as
'd be glad to do me a favor. An' then I'll telegraph a
man I used to work for out West who's the head or
something of a Labor Fed'ration an' see if he knows
anything about this Schonbrun bein' a labor agitator.
That's what he sounds like to have been to me. May
none of these do any good at all, but you might's well
have all the strings you can to your bow,"
As he entered the office he chuckled. “This here
is goin' to cost Bill a good sum in the line of telegrams,


94
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
I shouldn't wonder, but I cal'late if I make 'em strong
enough we may get answers to-day.".
At the moment I wondered why Bill had taken the
trouble to add me to his staff of detectives. Asey
Mayo had thought so far ahead of me that I was a
little exhausted trying to keep up with him. His casual
mention of friends scattered over the country surprised
me. In the town Asey had no one outside of Bill
Porter with whom he was intimate. He was a friendly
soul, but his friendliness was impersonal and uncon-
cerned. Yet this corps of acquaintances he unearthed
in such an offhand manner was undoubtedly genuine.
When Asey came back his face wore a troubled look.
"Have you any word from Jimmy?”
“Yup. He can't come down. Says the Porter com-
pany is on the verge of mergin' with some other con-
cern an' that he couldn't get away if Bill himself was
killed. He says for me to go to work an' spend as much
money as I want gettin' the thing all straightened out.
Says to wire this man whose name he gave me in New
York an ask if Sanborn had any enemies in the city.
So I did. Well, I guess we got to carry on by our-
selves. Now let's go to the hotel an' see if they's any
trace of Kurth there anywhere."
But at the hotel we found no John Kurth in the
register.
I described him as well as I could and the clerk
pondered. "No, there wasn't any one here who looked
like that. Did he come from New York?"


COMPLICATIONS
95
"He might have,” I said guardedly.
"Well, why don't you go over to that little camping
place next to Bangs' house, where he has the cottages
to let overnight? There was a man here yesterday
that looked like the one you want who came here for
a room, but we were full up and didn't have any room.
I told him the Nobscusset or the Belmont up the Cape
would be the best place for him to go, but he wanted
to stay right here."
"Kind of a car did he drive?” Asey asked.
"I couldn't tell you. I know it was a big seven-
passenger touring car, black and shiny and new-
looking. I think it had a New York plate. And it
had red wire wheels.”
"We'll go see. Say, if he does come back you needn't
tell him we was lookin' for him.” Asey placed a crisp
five-dollar bill on the desk.
The clerk was more gracious. "Of course not, Mr.
Mayo. Certainly not. If he does, I shall let you
know, I suppose? Yes? Thank you, Mr. Mayo."
"All alike,” Asey murmured as we left. "All alike.
We'll go see Lonzo Bangs.”
We found Mr. Bangs cleaning out a hen coop. The
work seemed to hold his attention, and he did not take
kindly to an interruption. I wondered if Asey would
try to bribe him with money; I knew we wouldn't get
our information for nothing, yet I also knew the effect
of a tip on the average independent Cape Codder. But
Asey had his own tactics.


96
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“Mornin', Lonzo.”
“Um,” said Mr. Bangs.
"Know that rowboat of Bill's, that Cape Cod dory
he had built last year up to Wareham?”
“Um.” Mr. Bangs dusted off a glass egg.
“Wanted to buy it a month or two ago, didn't you?"
"Uh-huh."
"Didn't, though."
"Nuh-uh.” Mr. Bangs shook his head.
“Price too high? Bill wanted fifteen dollars, 'f I
recall rightly."
Mr. Bangs made an assenting sound.
“Shouldn't wonder if you could have it for twelve.”
"Ten," said Mr. Bangs, coming to life suddenly.
"Eleven?”
"Ten,” decisively.
"Highway rob’ry, that's what it is. You can have it
for ten, though. F.O.B. our wharf.”
Mr. Bangs looked hurt. “Won't deliver?”
“Course not,” said Asey. "You're gettin' a bargain.
Wouldn't sell 'f it wasn't we was gettin' a new one."
“Throw in oars an' rowlocks?”
"Yup, as long's you pay cartin'.”
Abruptly Mr. Bangs laid down his broom and de-
parted into the house. He came out with a roll of one-
dollar bills secured by an elastic band; he gave it to
Asey, who gravely counted twice through the notes.
"Right?”
“All right, Lonzo."


98
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
Lonzo expansively, “ 'f I'd 'a'known he was a friend of
any Handy or a rel'tive of yours, I'd 'a' given him
a better cottage. The one he had ain't got such a good
bed.”
"I'm sure," I said, "that he enjoyed it.”
“Well, 'f he comes back, I'll do better by him."
“Say,” Asey remarked as we were leaving, "you
didn't happen to notice the number of his car, did you?”
"No, I didn't. But m'wife might of. She's a real
noticin' woman, Mariar is.”
He returned to the business of hen-coop cleaning and
Asey, with a weary little sigh, knocked on the kitchen
door of the Bangs house.
"If it's the fruit man," a shrill voice announced, "I
don't want nothin'. The A and P has good enough
without payin' all kinds of fancy prices. Why, Asey
Mayo, is that you? An' Miss Whitsby? Well, now,
you just come right in.”
We went into the hot kitchen.
"I'm doin' my bakin', but I ain't got one thing toffer
you. I'm real ashamed not to be more forehanded."
She waited expectantly.
Asey repeated the story of my mythical cousin and
his equally mythical friend. Did she remember the
number of Mr. Brown's car?
“'Twas a real funny number. 'Twas 11-C-11. I
ast him if that C meant 'twas New York City, an' he
said he didn't know what that letter meant, but he
guessed so."


COMPLICATIONS
99
“That's real good you remembered. An' now, Miss
Whitsby, didn't you want some tickets for the Temp’-
rance Union garden party? You're sellin' 'em, ain't
you, Mis' Bangs?”
She beamed. "I should say I am, an' if I haven't
been havin’ a time with them, what with those summer
folks, the gull pond ones, takin' half of 'em, an' then
returnin' all six because they decided to go somewheres
else that day.”
"I'll take the six,” I said, reaching for my purse..
Mrs. Bangs accepted the three dollars with volu-
minous thanks. Asey and I departed precipitately.
"Whew," said Asey as we rolled along, "y'know,
sometimes I kind of wonder myself at these here Cape
Codders. Here's your three dollars, Miss Prue. Bill
Porter is payin' all the incidental expenses like that.”
I noticed that they were three of the dollar bills
from Mr. Bangs' payment on the boat.
"Now we go to the phone office,” said Asey, “an'
strew a little bait for our fish, as the feller said.”
He chose the booth farthest away from the operator
and manipulated a nickel.
"Pretty fine inventions, tel'phone an' tel'graph. Yup.
Gimme the state police headquarters. Yup.”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded.
He closed one eye and opened it slowly
"State police headquarters?” he asked in Jimmy Por-
ter's precise clipped tones. "I should like to report
a stolen car...: Yes. A stolen car. A Packard seven


100 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
passenger touring car, New York license plate number
11-C-11. . . . Color? Black with red wire wheels....
No, the man will show you a license and registration in
the name of John Kurth. But it's forged. . . . Who
am I? This is Mr. Mayo speaking for Miss Dorothy
Cram of New York City. . . . Yes, it was Miss Cram's
car. Now, if any of your men sight that car, I wish
you'd have them bring it to Miss Prudence Whitsby's
cottage at Wellfleet. . . . Oh, yes! There's a reward."
He hung up the receiver and grinned at me.
"Asey, you down-right liar! What will happen if the
state police find out you're humbugging them like this?
There'll be an awful to-do.”
“The reward'll take care of that. It'll save us the
trouble of findin' this Mister Kurth. We ain't got
the time to go gallivantin' all over the Cape for him.
We got bigger an' better things to do. Ain't no use for
Mahomet t go † the mountin if the mountin'll be
made ť travel. An' them state police love pickin'
people up. Relieves the monotny."
"How did you learn to imitate Jimmy like that? You
had that Harvard-Oxford accent down pat.”
"I made so much fun of him that I got to learn to
do it pretty well. It's apt to get results you wouldn't
get otherwise. You know, I liked Jimmy better when
he talked like every one else.”
We climbed into the car. "I feel like Doctor Wat-
son,” I remarked.
“That dumb feller Sherlock Holmes was always


COMPLICATIONS
101
totin' around? Poof! I saw him at the movies. You
ain't no Doctor Watson, Miss Prue. Four eyes is better
than two any day of the week, an' I don't wear no
glasses. Nope, no reason for you to be feelin' that
way, just because I been doin' things you ain't no
need to know about much. Before long I may be the
one doin' the Watson act myself. Say, when we get to
Mis' Howe's will you do the talkin'? She don't care
for me on account of my not bein' a Methodist.”
"Neither am I, Asey.”
“No," said he laconically, "you ain't. But you're
you."
Mrs. Howe met us at the gate of her tiny white house
which looked like something from an Easter card. Here
she had her dining-room where summer visitors too lazy
to cook for themselves were fed.
"I'm real glad to see you two; I just know you're
going to tell me a lot I don't know about this Sanborn
business. Isn't that a pretty car? Is it Bill Porter's?
I suspected as much. And isn't it a pity about poor
Mr. Sanborn? Just as nice a man as you'd want to
meet anywhere, though he was a moody one if you ask
me."
“Moody?” I asked. It rarely took over one word
to elicit a hundred and one from Mrs. Howe.
"Well, maybe I ought not to say exactly moody, now
that the poor man's dead, but I'll tell you just what I
mean. He came here yesterday to see what time meals
was and he was late for dinner. Didn't seem to mind


102 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
that much, said he'd just's soon go to the hotel as not.
I told him he'd ought to bring a napkin ring, and he
joked about it just as nice and friendly as you please.
I explained to him that all mealers wasn't so honest,
and I'd had so many napkins rings taken away that
I had to have people bring their own or else have paper
napkins and I never could abide the scrimpy things."
"And quite right, too,” I told her. "But what was
there moody about him?"
"Well, just as he was driving off he said what did he
miss for dinner? And I told him what we had. We
had nice clam chowder with crackers in it, and my own
piccalilli that I make myself,—we always have that on
Fridays. Then we had flounders fried in deep fat,
you know, rolled in egg and fried real brown, and green
peas out of my own garden and hot biscuits. That is,
baking powder biscuits, not riz ones. And he laughed
and said he was real sorry to have missed all that.”
"I don't blame him one iota,” I said. "It's a meal
any one would be sorry to miss."
She simpered at me, and Asey gave me an admiring
glance.
"And,” she went on, "I told him, I said, now we
had a real nice sardine salad, too. And what do you
suppose that man did?"
"What?” I asked. I was beginning to feel like the
silent partner of a vaudeville act, the one who says
who and where and why and what for the other member
to make his points.


COMPLICATIONS
103
"Well, he shuddered like he was going to have a
stroke, he did. It was just the way Mr. Howe was
taken. And then he stared at me with the ugliest ex-
pression I ever saw and his eyes were sort of glarey."
I looked at Asey. He had used the same expression.
"And he just sort of stared. Then he let out a
scream and said 'Sardines! Don't you ever give me any
sardines or let me see them, either.'
"And just as I was going to ask him if he wanted
a soda mint or something, he drove that car of his away
from this very gate like I'd said it was a salad full
of poison. Now, wouldn't you call that being moody,
even if a man is dead?” she concluded triumphantly.
"I certainly should call it moody." I forced a touch
of indignation into my voice. "A grown man acting
like that about sardines.”
"I know it,” said Mrs. Howe. “I know it. I thought
at the time, 'Well, Mr. Sanborn, you may be a book-
writer and that may be some excuse for your being
different than other people, but I don't think that
there's any use or even any excuse for a writer acting
that way about a few sardines.'” Abruptly she changed
her tone. “Do you think Bill Porter killed him?”
"No; what time did Sanborn leave?” Asey asked
shortly.
“He left here a little after two. We have dinner
at twelve sharp and I know the tables was all cleared
off and the dishes washed when he came. Yes, it must
have been about a quarter past two."


104
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
I remembered that Sanborn had run over Boots at
two-thirty; then he probably had gone to the hotel for
luncheon and returned just before he came to the cot-
tage for the hammer. It all hung together. I won-
dered if there were any possible connection between his
anger and the sardines and the murder. But Sanborn
had been care-free enough when we had last seen him.
If he had been in a temper he had made a quick re-
covery.
Asey nodded thcughtfully. "Now, Mrs. Howe, you're
real good to tell us about Mr. Sanborn. But you won't
mention it to any one else, will you? I mean about
the sardines and all?".
"Of course not, not if you don't think it would be
right for me to do it. But now, I've been thinking.
What should I do with that money he left here for his
first week's board? Had I better keep it and turn it
over to his heirs if they come down here, do you think?"
I smothered a laugh. "No, you keep it, Mrs. Howe.
It's been paid you, and it's yours."
She smiled. "Well, now, that makes me feel better.
It was the first thing I thought of when the Nobles'
milk boy told me this morning, and I've had it on my
mind ever since. And I'll see that no one knows any-
thing about the way he acted over those sardines.”
We both thanked her, and Asey rolled the car away
just in time to offset a stream of questions.
He looked at me quizzically. "Gets cur'user an'
cur'user, don't it? Sanborn acts like a crazy man when


COMPLICATIONS
105
he hears the word sardines mentioned an' don't want to
see the things in front of him. An' he goes away in
such a dummed hurry that he runs over Boots to get
off his mad streak. An' yet there's a sardine tin beside
him when he's found killed. They was a strange sort
of thing to find anyway, an' it was even stranger when
they turned out to be Bill's sardines, or at least the tin
as belonged to 'em. But now that this turns up, I calls
it plumb downright a-mazin'."
"But what does it all mean, Asey? I wish we knew.”
"If wishes was hosses, beggars'd ride. I wisht I knew,
too, Miss Prudence-Doctor Watson-Sherlock Holmes.
I wisht I could say 'twas ele-menteery, but I can't
do nothin' of the kind.”
He leaned over and pressed a button on the ornate
dashboard. The arrogant notes of the musical horn
floated out over the meadows.
"I can't do nothin' of the kind,” he repeated. "But
you an' me is goin' to find out by Monday mornin'."


DOT BECOMES INVOLVED 107
We seated ourselves on the porch.
"Now,” said Asey, "I'd like to ask you some ques-
tions if you all don't mind. Miss Prue, where was you
durin' the time the doc said this happened?”
I related the story of Olga and the silverware.
“Then you was out in the kitchen all the time?"
"Yes.”
Asey's eyes twinkled. "I ain't askin' you because
I suspect you any but just for general information.
You're a sleuth same as me an' I'll exempt you from
any more. Now," he turned to Betsey, "where was you
from four-thirty to five-fifteen?”
"Up-town, getting lemons.”
“An' you was gone all that time? Stuff an' non-
sense, Betsey. It oughtn't to take you fifteen minutes
even in that pin-box of yours to go up an' get a couple
of lemons. What'd you do in the rest of the time?”
"Well, I didn't really start till about twenty minutes
of five because I remember asking Snoodles the time.
From half past four till then I was out here with Dot.”
"That don't help. You still got twenty minutes or so
to explain.”
"Well, I spent about five minutes picking out lemons
that were sufficiently succulent for Snoodles' taste. The
other ten or fifteen I spent talking to Mike Sullivan
about the baseball team."
"Can you remember what he said?”
"Clearly. He said the new pitcher was good but
that he 'wasn't getting no s'pot.' And if you really


108 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
want to check up, you can go over to the cabin and ask
him. He's staying there now that Simpkins has taken
the body away, seeing that no one ransacks the cabin.”
"How can I tell you ain't primed him?"
Betsey grinned. "Prime Slough Sullivan's son who
thinks he's greater than Philo Vance already just be-
cause he is Sullivan's son? You ought to know better,
Asey. Go get him to tell you."
Asey ambled off and returned in a few minutes.
"He's willin' to swear he talked with you for anyways
ten or twelve minutes. O. K., Betsey. That's so much
for the time. Did they watch you when you went off?”
“Yes; they saw me meet Bill at the foot of the lane."
“An' they knew where you was before that. What
about comin' home? Couldn't you have snuck over to
the cabin then?”.
“She couldn't have,” Dot informed him. “I heard
her car and she came in directly after. That's why I
talked about the sardines. I always kid her about
them. Remember, Miss Prudence?”
I nodded. Dot seemed still to be suffering from her
shock of the previous night. She did not accent her
words in her usual affected fashion, and her entire
stock of adjectives was apparently forgotten. She was,
all in all, unusually subdued, and her color was ghastly.
"Well, I cal’late that lets you out, Betsey. Have any
particular reason for killin' him?"
"Don't be a dolt. I've known him only since Wed-
nesday.”


DOT BECOMES INVOLVED 109
"No need to go bitin' my head off, Betsey. You
don't need to know a person a lifetime to find out a
reason for killin' him. But I'll give you a clean slate.
Now, Mrs. Manton, where was you?”
"I went up-stairs a few seconds after Mr. Sanborn
came, earlier in the afternoon. I stayed up in my room
till I heard Betsey come back from town.”
“What were you doin' all the while?”
"I was lying on my bed resting. Part of the time
I read. The rest of the time I dozed.”
"Didn't come down-stairs or go out all of that time?”
"Don't you think they would have heard me if I
had?” She smiled wryly. “People usually hear me
long before they see me coming."
We all smiled. I remembered how she had clumped
down those stairs a dozen times since she had arrived.
"An' you didn't know nothin' of Sanborn before you
came down here?"
"Of course I had heard of him and knew that he
wrote books. I never read one of them, though, till
Prudence gave me one yesterday. That was what I
read while I was up in my room."
“Well, Mrs. Manton, I guess we can let you down
out of the witness stand, too. Now, Dot, you was on
the porch?”
“Yes.”
“All the time?"
"Most of it.” The usually loquacious Dot was ex-
ceedingly taciturn.


110
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Did you go off it, or go indoors?”
“Both.”
“S’pose you tell us.” Asey suggested.
“Oh, I went inside to get a cigarette and then I
strolled down by the tennis courts.”
“Be a little mite more exact, will you? Why'd you
go down there?” Asey's tone was sharper than it had
been.
"To see a boat."
"I should think you could of seen a boat better from
up here on the hill.”
"Well,” Dot hesitated. "It had gone behind the
wharf.”
“When did you go inside?”
"It was a minute or so after Miss Prudence left. I
had seen the boat and I wanted the glasses. While I
was inside I lighted a cigarette and hunted for the
binoculars."
“How long was you in there?”
“About five minutes."
“Now, Bill must have left about then, 'cause he told
the sheriff he wasn't in the cabin more'n six or seven
minutes. Didn't you see him go?”
"No. He must have left when I was inside.”
“So you picked up the glasses and went walkin'
down to the tennis courts to see a boat? An' you didn't
even notice Bill's car goin' up the beach road?”
“That's right. I went down the lane. I didn't notice
the car. I was too intent on looking at the boat.”


DOT BECOMES INVOLVED
111
"Kind of a boat was it?” Asey asked quickly.
“Why—why, it was just a fishing boat."
"Schooner? Smack? How many masts did it have?
What was her name? You'd ought to seen that if you
had even bird glasses.”
"I don't know what kind of boat it was,” Dot an-
swered sullenly. "I'm not acquainted with such things.
It might have had one mast or a dozen. And I'm sure
I don't know the name.”
"Dot,” said Asey softly, "the first time you come
down here I taught you about riggin' myself. I got
you so's you could tell the dif'rence between a brig an'
a brigantine an'a barque an'a barkantine. An' you got
as good eyesight as any one I know of.”
Dot said nothing.
"Was there any one on the tennis courts when you
was down there, Dot?"
“Yes, there were some people playing tennis.”
"Remember who they was or how many of 'em?”
"No, I don't know who they were or how many."
Asey considered. "Humpf. You knew Sanborn
before you come here, didn't you?”
She nodded.
"How long'd you known him?"
Dot banged her fist with such force on the table
that a vase of flowers bounced to the floor. “Miss Pru-
dence, this man has absolutely no right to ask me any
questions, and I'm not going to stand for any more
of his probing. Just because I happen to have been the


112 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
only person who can't account for those forty minutes
to a split second I'm not going to have you or any one
else suspect that I committed the murder.” She ignored
the expressions of surprise on all our faces. “And I
can't see one single reason why I should tell you about
Dale Sanborn. He'd dead. I didn't kill him. And
that's all you need to know.”
She scratched a match furiously and lighted a cig-
arette. No one said anything. I watched her hand
tremble as she held up the match to blow it out.
“Very well.” Asey was calm, matter-of-fact. "Can
I talk to that maid of yours, Miss Prue? If Dot wants
to keep all she knows to herself there ain't no reason
I can see for me makin' myself objectionable. If it
don't make no difference to her that Bill Porter's
arrested for a crime he never did while the one who
did the murder sits twiddlin' his thumbs, it's all right
with me. Nice friendly attude, Dot. But you ain't the
first person in hist'ry to backslide. It's been done
before. Popular in Bible days, 'twas, an' the custom's
lingered.”
During his speech Dot's face had grown whiter, but
she made no attempt to speak. I don't think five people
have ever been much more uncomfortable.
At last Betsey spoke nervously. "I'll go get Olga."
"No," said Dot wearily. "Don't bother. Asey has
made his point.” She crushed out her cigarette and
lighted another. "I knew Dale Sanborn very well. As
a matter of fact I was engaged to marry him though


DOT BECOMES INVOLVED 113
we hadn't intended to announce it till this fall.”
All of us felt certain that Dot and Dale knew each
other better than their behavior indicated, but we had
scarcely anticipated this announcement.
“We'd had a sort of quarrel.” Dot continued. “I
had been going out with other men, and he didn't like
it. I hadn't heard from him for two or three weeks
before I came down. Some one said he was out on
Long Island. That's why I jumped at the chance to
come and visit you. I wanted to show him that I could
go away and leave him and not pay any attention to
what he did at all.”
"You didn't know he was here?” Asey asked.
"No. But when I found he was and apparently so
intimate with all of you, of course I wasn't going to be
such a nitwit as to tell you anything about us. Much
less after the way he acted when you remarked yester-
day afternoon that you understood I knew him.”
I remembered his answer to that comment of mine,
a listless “Dot did," with a noticeable accent on the
"did.”
"So,” Dot went on, “I thought I'd just sit tight and
say nothing. I thought everything would come out all
right. It always had before.”
"You'd had fights with him before?” Asey questioned.
"Oh, yes. Lots of times. Dale wasn't the easiest
man in the world to get along with. They weren't
serious quarrels ever. Just misunderstandings. They
always got themselves settled."


114 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
She blew her nose violently. She seemed to be telling
us the truth about her relationship with Sanborn even
though her answers to Asey's previous questions were
as full of holes as the proverbial Swiss cheese. I re-
called how red her face had been when she came out
into the kitchen. Of course she might have been over-
heated from her trip up and down the hill. On the
other hand, she might have run over to the cabin and
back, too. I was more than dubious about Dot.
"Does, I mean, did Sanborn like sardines?” Asey
asked abruptly. "Did you ever see him eat any?”
She looked at him wonderingly. "No. That is, I
don't think so. I'm sure of it. Once I ordered hors
d'ouevres in a restaurant- ” she stopped and looked
inquiringly at Asey.
“Yup, I know what they are. Go on."
"And I asked the waiter what they had in particular
because I'm fond of salmon paste on caviarettes. The
waiter said they had anchovy paste, and he started to
say something about sardines when Dale stopped him
short and said I'd have fruit cup. I didn't want fruit
cup and I said so. But Dale waved the waiter off and
said that when he took me to dinner I'd have what
he ordered. He didn't talk like that as a rule, but he
acted as though he were awfully peeved about some-
thing, so I didn't press the point."
“Didn't tell you why he didn't want you to have
sardines, did he?”
"No."


DOT BECOMES INVOLVED 115
"Possibly,” Emma suggested, putting down her knit-
ting for the first time that day, "he didn't like sardines.
Don't you think that most people have some one thing
they loathe in the line of food? What I mean is, there's
nothing so very mysterious about all this business, is
there? I know that I grow quite ill at the sight of a
prune. I hate to see people eat them. I had to eat
a plate of stewed prunes every morning of my childhood
till I finally rebelled at the age of ten. Your particular
hatred is baked beans, isn't it, Prudence?”
"Not baked beans. Lima beans.” I made a face.
“And Betsey?"
"Onions in any form. Ugh!"
“Dot?"
“Cashew-nuts. I can't stand them.”
"I see what you're drivin' at, Mrs. Manton. I don't
care over-much for cavi-air myself.”
We all looked at Asey, but he chose to take our
astonishment for friendly interest.
"I was in Rooshia once an'a chap there he give me
e big hunk o that black bread all spread over with
it. I thought it was some sort of jam. Hoped it was
ras'bry.” A look of disgust came over his face.
“Smelled more like old T wharf than anything I ever
smelt since. And taste! Say, I remember that taste
yet. Bill he buys the stuff an' eats it, but when he does,
I just have to get outside an’ wait till the air's got
freshed up. But, Dot, don't you know nothin' about
his family?"


116
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“Not a single thing, Asey."
“You was goin' to marry a man you didn't know
nothing about, not even where he come from?”
"He was born in New York. He told me his family
were all dead."
"These girls to-day!” Asey commented disparag-
ingly. “Now when I was a boy a woman who married
a man, she knew all about him. Knew about his family
an' who they was an' how long they'd had money if they
had it, an' where they got it from an’ what his great-
grandmother's maiden name was. I don't mean any-
thing about you, Dot, an' you know I'm real sorry
that anything happened to a feller you liked. But just
the samey.” He shook his head.
"He said almost nothing about his family, but I
got the impression that they had all died when he was
young, and had left him rather badly off. I always had
the idea, though he never said as much, that he had got
to the place he was in to-day more or less by his own
efforts.”
"I see.” Asey mused. “Then you just went into
the living-room an' down to the tennis courts an' back
again an' then out into the kitchen? Can't add any-
thing to that?"
"No." Dot bit her under lip till it looked as though
it were going to bleed.
"An' you didn't know nothin' about all this till you
heard about it from Miss Prue?”
“No. And I fainted when she told me. It was a


DOT BECOMES INVOLVED 117
silly thing to do and I never have before. But it was
a shock.”
I thought to myself that it might have been a shock
or it might have been good acting. Of our household,
Dot had more reason to kill Sanborn than Betsey or
Emma. He was her fiancé; they had had a quarrel
which she declared to be innocent enough, but it had
been sufficient to make him leave her temporarily. She
had found him apparently preparing to spend the rest
of the summer in fairly close proximity to another un-
deniably attractive girl; she had at least fifteen minutes
about the time Sanborn was killed for which she could
not or would not produce an alibi. I scribbled on a
chart I had been making of how and where we all had
spent Friday afternoon.
"Now, Dot, honest Injun, I don't like to keep on
askin' you things like you was on a witness stand, but
can't you remember anything at all about Sanborn that
might help us any? Little things like what subjects
he got int’rested in an' things like that?”
Dot thought a minute. "He was crazy about music
and some of the modern painters like Tursky and
Weiner and all that crowd who do those appalling por-
traits of Russian peasants and all such things.” She
pointed to the magazine section of an old Sunday paper.
“That had one of Lenin in it that he was awfully keen
about. And he liked that play, I can't remember the
name, about prisons and capital punishment and all.
And he used to get perfectly wrathy about those Italians


DOT BECOMES INVOLVED 119
could remember some one who didn't like him so much,
Dot.”
"Oh, no one in particular that I know about. There
was some one who started a silly lawsuit against him,
but it was only something about his books, he told
me. I can't think that that would throw any light on
this. I don't know who it was, even, but I know some
lawyer friend of his got it stopped. As far as I know,
he didn't have any enemies at all.”
Olga appeared in the doorway. "Luncheon, Miss
Whitsby.”
Asey rose from his chair with alacrity. “'F he didn't
have no enemies, he was one lucky man. We'll 'journ
for a while, Dot. It's a case of 'Down with your head
an' up with your paws an' thank the good Lord for the
use o’your jaws,' as the feller said."


CHAPTER VIII
SULLIVAN FINDS THE HAMMER
AFTER luncheon Asey resumed his questioning.
"Can't you think of anything else about Sanborn
that sort of stood out in your mind?”
Dot shook her head. "I'm afraid I can't, though
it may sound absurd. About all I can think of is that
I've lost him for good.” She laughed cynically. "I
suppose I ought to be used to losing things by this
time. I lost my family even earlier than Betsey did,
and my guardian lost all my money playing the stock-
market. And I even lost my thesis the week before
graduation. Remember that, Bets? I lost every bet
I ever made in my life. If I called heads, it came tails.
If I played red, black turned up.” Dot stopped short.
"I say, that does remind me of something."
“What?"
“Why, it was that time I lost, flipping a coin with
Ellie Batten to see who'd stay at the settlement house
one night when the matron was sick.”
We waited expectantly.
"It was about a year and a half ago, in February.
I lost as usual and spent the night there. About two
o'clock in the morning the watchman routed me out of
bed. The night cop on the beat had brought in an
120


SULLIVAN FINDS THE HAMMER 121.
old woman he'd found who had collapsed just outside.
They wanted to see if I could do anything before
the ambulance came.
"She was pretty far gone when I saw her. Exposure
and cold and just plain starvation. I did all I could,
but it didn't help much. You could see that she had
been perfectly stunning once, even though her clothes
were nearly rags. I looked in her hand-bag to see if
I could find out who she was. There was an address
somewhere on First Avenue and a newspaper clipping.
I looked at it and on one side was a picture of Dale.
It's strange that you should have asked me about a
mustache because I remember one had been drawn
on his upper lip. Exaggerated, you know, the way a
child would do it. On the other side there was a no-
tice of a sale somewhere and I concluded that that was
why she had cut the thing out, and that the picture and
the mustache were just sort of accidental.”
“Ever mention it to Sanborn?”
"No, I never did. One of the girls at the settlement
got the D.T.'s that night and it drove the whole thing
out of my mind. I don't suppose I've thought of it
since. Probably it doesn't mean much. Lots of people
of that class carry pictures around with them, like Lind-
bergh and the Prince of Wales and the president and
all. It's a queer thing for me to remember, and it
probably won't be of any use at all.”
"You can't never tell,” said Asey. “Tell me, did
you ever find out what the woman's name was?”


• 122 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"No. You see I went down there at night very
seldom. That was an exception. I don't think I've
stayed there over twice since. I never saw the police-
man again and the night watchman left for good soon
after. There wasn't any way of finding out even if
I'd remembered to ask.”
"I see.” He looked at her keenly. "Dot, did you
kill Sanborn?"
Her cigarette slipped from her fingers, but her voice
was perfectly steady as she looked him straight in the
eye and answered, "No, I didn't.”
Asey nodded as though he believed her, which was a
whole lot more than I did.
“Now, can I talk to that hired girl of yours?"
Betsey summoned Olga, who came out wiping her
hands on a dish towel. I have not described Olga be-
fore because there is very little to describe. She has
been in the family for thirty years, and I know I could
not get along without her. She is neither tall nor short,
dark nor fair, ugly nor beautiful. She is as careful
about her words as she is about the silver. When Bet-
sey and Bill were children they used to have a game
called "Getting Olga to Talk.” It appealed to them
because of their very complete lack of success. It
was Bill's opinion that she fined herself for every un-
necessary word. Olga was parsimonious to an ex-
treme.
"Didn't see any one around the cabin yesterday out-
side of Mr. Sanborn, did you?”
W


124 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
We hung on her words.
"I say, 'No spik English.'”
"Oh, m'God!” said Asey weakly, after we had
managed to quell a young gale of laughter. "N'en
what?"
"I go up-town.”
“An' he did too?"
"He come on this way.”
“What'd he look like?”
"Kind of tall, dark. Dark eyes. Dark skin. He
talked fresh. He was a bum, all dirty. He looked like
he walked a long ways.”
John Kurth was tall and dark.
"Had you ever seen him before?" I asked.
She wrinkled her forehead. "I ask myself yesterday.
I think he is like some one I know, but I am not know-
ing who. It is like he looks like some one I know than
like I remember him.”
“Come again, Olga, we folks don't get you.”
"I do not think I see this man before, but some one
who looks like him I have seen.”
“Hm. I see. Didn't remind you of any one ever
you saw visitin' Miss Prue?”
"No." She shook her head decisively.
"You seem pretty sure,” Asey remarked.
"If he visits Miss Whitsby, he would give me money
when he go and I remember next time I see him."
“That's fair enough,” said Asey. "You didn't see
him again? An' he kept right on headed this way?"


126
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
3:20-3:22 Dale leaves and is not seen again until
I find his body in the cabin.
3:30 Olga leaves for town.
3:45 She meets her hobo.
4:00 The hobo might have been in the cabin.
4:30 I go out into the kitchen.
4:40 Betsey goes up-town for lemons.
4:41 Bill comes up the hill in Lucinda and goes
into the cabin.
4:40-5:15 is the time the doctor says Sanborn was
killed.
4:43 Dot says she went into the house for a ciga-
rette and the binoculars.
4:48 Dot says she came out, walked to the tennis
courts and back up to the cottage.'
“Bill wasn't in the cottage over six or seven minutes,"
Asey added, "so we'll put in that he left at 4:47 or so."
He read on:
“15:00 I notice Bill's car is gone.
5:05 Dot comes out into the kitchen.
5:10 Betsey comes back. Her delay explained.
5:12 Emma comes down-stairs. We hear her come
down-stairs.'"
Asey omitted my note to the effect that Emma
couldn't have gone over to the cabin and back in the
time that Dot was out, ten or twelve minutes, without
us hearing her, or without tall hustling on her part.
He also did not read my comment that Dot had been


SULLIVAN FINDS THE HAMMER 127
on her college track team and seemed very red and
breathless when she had come out into the kitchen.
615: 12-7:00 We eat supper.
7:10 Dot and Betsey go to the movies. Betsey
doesn't look into the garage where she would
have found Sanborn's car, but takes it for
granted that he is away at dinner.
7:00-10:00 Emma and I play cards while they
are away.
10:10 The girls come home.
10:20 I find the body in the cabin.'"
- -
-
-
-
-
-
"That seems to cover everything,” said Asey. “We
know he left Mrs. Howe's at two-fifteen an' he ran
over Boots at two-thirty. Then he probably went an’
got his lunch an' come home here. Them hotel lunches
ain't nothing luxurious an' he could of done that easy
in the time he had. An' from the time you saw him
go off with the hammer till the doc says he was killed,
we know Bill went there, an' maybe this bum of Olga's
an' maybe a half-dozen others besides.”
He put the paper carefully in the pocket of his
flannel shirt.
"I'd give a cookie to know what killed him," he
said. "Course it might of been the handle of the
hammer that Slough is so upset over, because as he
says, some one must of had some reason in takin' it
away. You just don't take hammers off as a general
thing. An' I don't think it's likely that any one bor-


128 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
rowed it from him, 'cause they ain't no one around to
do any borrowin' an' they'd 'a' come to you anyhows.
'Pears to me as if Slough's billy would of done this
murder fine.”
"Well,” I said, "I'd give a pound of Huntley and
Palmer's best cookies to know how that sardine tin
got there and who took it and who left it and where
the one who left it found it."
Asey smiled. “An' I'd just as soon know why that
blanket was tucked over him, too. That's something
Slough asked Bill, why'd he tuck him up so cozy after
killin' him.”
“The murderers I've read about," I remarked, "have
not usually been so considerate."
"It occurs to me,” said Emma, "that that sardine
tin is the most peculiar thing. If Sanborn wouldn't
let Dot have sardines, is it likely that he would let
any one else eat them in his cabin? It doesn't seem
that way to me. Isn't it possible that Sanborn might
have been out while the eating was taking place?”
"Might be," Asey said.
"Down on the beach he mentioned something about
finding an Indian arrow head around the cottage, and
he said he was going arrow hunting in the afternoon.
Maybe he was doing that and some one, possibly the
man Olga saw, hit him over the head and then lugged
him into the cabin."
"But with what motive?" I objected. “I mean, why
didn't he leave him where he killed him? And why


SULLIVAN FINDS THE HAMMER 129
should a tramp kill him? The doctor said that there
was no indication that anything had been taken. And
the man came here before Bill did and Sanborn was
alive then. And think of the job of carrying a man of
Sanborn's size from the woods to the cabin. He's not
big, but it would be a dead weight. And the body was
lying just as it was struck down.”
"Well, you don't know exactly what time the strange
man came, even if he came at all. I was only citing
a possibility.”
"I wonder who the hobo was?” Betsey asked.
Asey smiled and rose. “We could sit here an’ wonder
till doomsday or the day after an’ we wouldn't prob-
ably get anywheres at all. Miss Prue, I guess you an'
me is goin' to reconnoiter ’n wander some more. We'd
ought to got some answers to our telegrams by now.”
"Can't we come too?” Betsey asked.
"Nope. You an' Dot can amuse yourself by tryin'
to find if the people who was playin' tennis saw Dot
at the time she says she was down by the court. They
keep a list of whoever all plays there an' it oughtn't to
be hard to find out. But don't you go to cook up any
stories. I can smell a cooked-up story as quick's I
can smell fried fish. An' if you tell me any lies I'll
put you both in the stocks longside of Bill.”
“What about me?" Emma asked.
"Well, Mrs. Manton, we ain't goin' to take you
neither, an' I hope you won't feel like you was bein'
neglected. Fact is, I want some one here more'n that


SULLIVAN FINDS THE HAMMER 131
They ran along. Asey and I followed more leisurely.
The onlookers were not at all reticent as Asey
stopped to let down the rope. They commented freely
and impartially on our appearance and wondered all too
audibly whether "the gent was the lady's husband or
just her shover.” Asey gave no evidence of hearing
these remarks, and I did my best to be as indifferent
as he was. But I knew that my ears burned.
I asked him what he thought about Dot and he shook
his head. “I don't think she done it, Miss Prue, but
there's something funny about it. They's a nigger in
the wood-pile. I guess she's not tellin' us everything
she knows, not by a long shot. But if we just let her
think everything's all right she may forget herself an
tell us accidental an' of her own accord. Don't pay
to watch a pot an' blow on the coals to make 'em hot,
as the feller said. Fishes don't bite when you sing 'em
cajolin' songs. But we'll find out about Dot, though.”
“And do you think the hobo was Kurth?”
"Don't know. It might be an' it mightn't. We can
tell more about that when the cops bring us Kurth.”
He stopped at the town landing, and called to one
of the loafers by the dock. "Hey, do you know what
time Nickerson's boat come in yesterday?”.
The man addressed deliberated. “'Bout five
o'clock."
"Thanks.” Asey drove on. “Well, there was a boat,
Miss Prue, comin' in about that time. She'd 'a' seen it
on the hill about twenty minutes 'r a quarter to five.


132 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
There's that much truth in what she says. She couldn't
of seen it much before an' she wouldn't of seen it later
than ten of five, 'cause it would of gone around the point
then. Now, we'll go to Stocktons an' check up on
your cook.”
“What motive," I asked, "would Kurth have for
killing Sanborn? I've been wondering."
"Couldn't say. Did you ever stop to think, Miss
Prue, if all the people in this world who had enemies
killed 'em off? Did you ever think how much com-
pet'tion they'd be to kill some folks, or how many'd
they be left? Not many, I guess. Don't you rec'lect
the story of the feller who sent telegrams to all the
'portant men of a town once sayin', 'All is discovered;
flee at once,' an' the next day every last one of 'em
had beaten it? Well, they's a lot of different kinds
of men in this world, each's got his own ideas about
prohibition an’ war an' so on, an' not every one of
'em is any Abe Lincoln or George Washin'ton. They
all got reasons for killin' people, an' when one's found
dead, there's usually a reason. They ain't many whys
without becauses. You don't kill people 'cause you
don't like the color of their hair or the cut of their
weskit. Usually it's because they done you dirt. You
can dig up the dirt, if you know where to dig. Re-
minds me, I didn't ask you if you done this, yet.”
"I most certainly and assuredly did not kill Dale
Sanborn,” I said with dignity.
He grinned. "Hope I can bank on that. Well, I'll


SULLIVAN FINDS THE HAMMER 133
go an' ask this countrywoman of Olga's about yester-
day, an' I sure hope she's not as ret'cent as her girl
friend.”
He disappeared inside the Stocktons' kitchen and
came back inside of five minutes. “She says she bane
met Olga at ten minutes of four, walked up the road
to meet her, an' they bane together till after ten last
night. Yah, she bane. That clears that up. Besides,
I don't think Olga'd do any killin'. She'd be too afraid
that some one would ask her questions afterward.”
He started the car, then stopped.
"Won't need to call on Sullivan. Here he comes.
Hi, Slough. What's news?”
Sullivan smiled broadly. “Just the man I wanted to
see, Asey. Just the man. I wanted to save you a lot
of time and trouble, you an' Miss Whitsby. I was on
my way up to the cottage to find you."
"What's up?" Asey asked amiably. “They made
you head of the Pinkertons or something?"
"Not yet,” returned Sullivan. “But they may at
that. You and Miss Whitsby don't need to do any
more detectin', you don't. You can go right home and
save your wind to cool your coffee.”
"How come, Slough?”
"You remember that hammer, the one Sanborn bor-
rowed, the one we couldn't find, the one the doc said
might of done the murder?"
"I heard tell of it,” said Asey cautiously.
"Well, I found it."


134
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Where?” I demanded.
"In a place where it'll take a lot more explainin'
than what's been done already to make it seem of no
account.”
He drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it with
more care than was absolutely necessary.
"Reporter's cigar?” Asey queried. "Smells like it.
Well, where'd you find this here hammer? In some
one's fish net out in the harbor?"
"No," said Sullivan, enjoying himself hugely, “I
happened to find it in Bill Porter's car. To be real
exact, in the back of the seat of that old car he drives
around.”
Asey and I looked at each other as Augustus might
have looked when some one told him the sad news of
his legions lost in Teutoberg Forest.


CHAPTER IX
THE DOCTOR AND HIS NOTES
SULLIVAN enjoyed our discomfiture.
“That's just where I found it. I was taking a look
around his house a little while ago and I wandered
around the garage. Saw that old car of his and just for
fun I gave it the once-over. And right down behind
the front seat, there was the old hammer."
“Might have been one belongin' to the car,” Asey
offered.
"Yes. Might of. But it's a nice spandy brand-new
old hammer, and it's got written on the handle of it in
pencil 'Whitsby, their hammer.” He passed the article
in question to me. “Recognize this, Miss Whitsby?"
It was undeniably the one we had given Sanborn. I
remembered that after we had used it while putting up
our curtains at the cottage, Betsey had sat down and
scrawled that inscription on it. Betsey can not resist
the lure of a freshly sharpened pencil. She ruins tele-
phone pads by covering them with meaningless hiero-
glyphics while she talks on the phone, and she is always
scribbling comments on the margins of her books.
I admitted that the hammer was ours.
"Well, that's that.”
“Show it to Bill?” Asey asked.
135


136 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“Yes. And you should hear what he said.”
“What'd he say? Didn't he give any explanation?"
"Sure he gave me an explanation. Captain Kinney
of the old second precinct he used to get a big kick out
of the reasons people gave him when they had things
there wasn't any need for them to have. That is, un-
less they were connected with a crime. I got a kick
out of Bill's reasons too. He claims he was mad as
hops when he went to see Sanborn. He says this ham-
mer was on the table when he went into the cabin, and
he just picked it up and fiddled with it the way you
fiddle with a paper-knife or a pair of scissors or some-
thing like that. Then he says he got even madder when
Sanborn says he didn't run over the dog, and he left the
place more mad than when he went in.”
Sullivan laughed uproariously. "He claims he was
so hot 'n' bothered that most likely he just toted it
off with him and forgot that he'd done any such thing.
Now, ain't that a likely bit to give for an explanation?
Seems as if I could hear already what the district at-
torney'd do to a thing like that. Picked it up and took
it away, he says, so mad he don't know what he was
doing, an' then he goes and forgets all about it. Seems
to me if he could do that, he could of hit Sanborn over
the head with it and forgot about it just as easy. Likely,
ain't it, Asey? Real likely."
"Might be at that, Slough. Truth's stranger than
fiction. You think he killed Sanborn with it?”
“Yes. And even if he didn't, it'll take more ex-


THE DOCTOR AND HIS NOTES 137
plaining than Bill Porter's done already to make it seem
like anything so common as takin' away a pencil or
something. Well, so long. I got to go to see some
reporters. They're waiting for an interview.”
"Let 'em take a picture of you with your uniform on,"
Asey suggested.
"They already have. Three times. Thank you just
the same. And don't you think you two better save
gasoline an' leave detectin' to those that make it a busi-
ness?"
"Dunno,” Asey drawled, “ 's we will."
Sullivan shrugged his shoulders. “As you like, as
you like.”
“How's Bill?" I asked.
"Oh, him? He's all right. In fact, he's better.
When I found that hammer, I knew I'd got all I wanted,
so I took him out of the pillory." His tone was benign.
"Guess you found public opinion wasn't goin' ť
stand for nothin' like that, didn't you?” Asey asked.
“Public opinion didn't have one thing to do with it,"
Sullivan retorted, though his face was rather more than
pink. “I was only keepin' him there till he got ready
to confess, anyhow. An' if he hadn't rubbed me the
wrong way, he wouldn't of been here at all.”
"Hmmm,” said Asey, nodding. "I see. Well, what
you done with him now, huh?"
Sullivan chewed the end of his cigar. "Well, there
wasn't no place that was really safe for a killer like
him, an'at first I didn't know what to do with him. But


138 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
some one suggested a box-car we just unloaded with
stuff for the store; it's got a good lock, and there's
plenty air even if there ain't no light to speak of. Be-
sides, it'll kind of give him a taste of the solitary con-
finement that'll be coming to him soon."
Asey and I looked at each other in consternation.
"Well, so long,” Sullivan waved a hand airily, took
back the hammer and, with a flourish, drove away.
“Well," I said.
"Hell, that's what you mean.” Asey bit off a new
hunk of tobacco. "Plain honest hell with fringes.
What'd that fool boy do a thing like that for, I ask you?
Whyn't he take his dummed ole sardine tin if he had
to take something, 'stead of that hammer? And why
didn't he have the wit to say he didn't know nothing
about it when Slough asked him? That's what I want
to know. What's he got to go an' tell the truth for?
Course," he added, “I raised him to tell the truth, but
I thought I'd taught him how to discrim'nate about
tellin' it, too. They's some things it don't pay to be
too truthful about, an' when you got yourself arrested
for murder you ought to know it. I don't see's how a
little white fib would 'a' hurt his soul mor'n this ham-
mer's goin' to hurt him. Them Porters has got a streak
of crazy blood in 'em, an' that's a fact."
“What'll we do now?"
"Do? What in time can we do? We can go on just
like we was goin' on an try to find out who done it. We
can go on an' hope the sky falls an' lets down a shower


THE DOCTOR AND HIS NOTES 139
us.
o skylarks an' rainbows an' the feller that killed San-
born. We'll just forget all about that crazy fool boy.
We'll go after our telegrams an' see if any one of them
guys got anything for us.”
"But what about Bill and the box-car?" I asked.
Asey shrugged his shoulders. "I guess it ain't so
public as the pil'ry, but that's about all the better it
is. I bet that boy thinks twice 'fore he eats another
sardine, that's what I bet.”
I nodded heavily. That was one way of looking at
the situation.
At the station we found two messages waiting for
us. "Nothin' like sendin' answers prepaid if you want
to get real quick service,” Asey remarked. “One's from
the feller in Boston an' the other's from that one in
New York. This is what the first one says:
"Man called David Schonbrun reported killed strike
riot 1923 Lowell Mass. Riddled body found and iden-
tified by authorities not confirmed as Schonbrun by
friends or family. Half a dozen others killed at same
time believed foreign agitators and never identified at
all. Perfectly possible body of Schonbrun might have
been one of other workers and not man himself if that
answers your question. Can find no record of him
afterward. Had been jailed Lowell two months previous
contempt of court. Description you give fits but Schon-
brun had mustache. Will send you all else available if
and when found.
"Humpf. That kind of fits in with what Harlow


140 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
said,” Asey mused. “There's a good chance, then,
that he wasn't killed at all. When was his first book
out, do you happen to know, Miss Prue?”
“Somewhere around 1924-25, I believe. I heard
Betsey mention something about it.”
"Well, that all fits together. I guess we'll take it
for granted, Miss Prue, that this Sanborn was Schon-
brun. Maybe he ain't after all, but it seems to me to
be a nice beginnin' for us to make. An' well begun's
half done, as the feller said. Now, this other's from
the City Hall feller.
"Four David Schonbruns in records," he read. “One
born Barvaria 1874 glue manufacturer no family. One
born here 1899 died 1901 with parents in epidemic
scarlet fever. One born Stuttgart 1876 married Marie
Stravinoff, children David born city May 19, 1897,
Abraham born Brooklyn October 2, 1899, father killed
blast in Jersey City plant 1903, mother died February,
1929, starvation
"Asey," I interrupted breathlessly, "remember Dot's
story? Do you suppose the woman she told us about,
the one in the settlement house, was Sanborn's mother?”
"Kind of looks that way." He continued reading:
"No record death David Schonbrun or brother. If
last is one you want let me know as remember connec-
tion with strike last year and will send details."
“That couldn't be Dale, could it? Do you suppose
that the brother is a labor agitator too?"


THE DOCTOR AND HIS NOTES 141
"Guess so. So the brother is followin' in the foot-
steps of David an' he's active enough to get his name
known. I wonder if he had a hunch his brother wasn't
dead an' was tryin' to find out by goin' after him that
way?"
“Maybe. But Asey, if there was the other brother,
why did the mother starve to death? She had him
to look out for her."
“Maybe an maybe not. Well, I'll send to these
fellers an' tell them to send me all they know. N'en
we'll have only that chap out West an' Jimmy's friend
to hear from."
“Asey, do you suppose that that hobo was the
brother, and not Kurth? That might account for Olga's
thinking he looked like some one she had seen but not
some one she actually remembered."
Asey slapped his hand on the wheel. “Them Porty-
gees have a sayin' that woman's council may not be a
lot, but the one who scorns it ain't none the wiser. By
gum, Miss Prue, I never thought of that. We'll go
right up this minute an ask her.”
But Mrs. Howe, standing in front of her house, called
for us to stop as we drove by.
She bustled out to the car. “Well, I'm real glad
you stopped this time. I waved and called when you
went by before till folks thought I was crazy, but you
two was so busy with each other that you didn't have
no eyes for me at all. It's about those sardines."
“What about 'em?” Asey asked.


142 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Well, you know you told me not to mention a
thing about them to any one and I didn't. But it's no
use, and I might as well.”
“What d’you mean?"
"Well, at dinner-time to-day a real pleasant lady
stopped here in her car and asked if she could have
lunch. She'd seen the sign out here about meals, I
guess. And she was so nice I told her of course she
could eat here, even though it was pretty late and most
of my mealers had finished. She was real grateful and
said if she was putting me out any, she'd be glad to
pay extra. Well, while she was eating, she talked about
this Sanborn business and said what an awful thing it
was, which it is, and I think it's a blot on the town,
just as I was saying to Addie Phillips ”
“Get back to the mutton,” said Asey.
"Mutton? Oh, you mean the sardines. I said to
her, I said, 'Looks to me like Bill Porter done it,
though why he went and left a sardine tin behind him,
I for one don't see.'
"And she looked real queer at me and said that she
knew Dale Sanborn real well, and she knew it for a
fact that he didn't ever eat sardines not even want to
have them around him or even mentioned.”
"Hadn't she read about it in the papers?" I asked.
“That's what I told her, that it was in all the papers,
and she said that she hadn't seen to-day's paper; she'd
just heard of it while she was getting gasoline some-
wheres. Anyways, I thought I'd let you know that


THE DOCTOR AND HIS NOTES 143
there wasn't any use in keeping that about the sardines
a secret, because other people seem to know about it
too."
“Did she talk as though she knew him well, or did
she tell you her name?” Asey demanded.
“Well, I suppose she knew him well or she wouldn't
know what he liked to eat. She didn't say what her
name was, but there was a little pin made out of some
shiny stones that looked like diamonds on her dress
and the initials as far as I could make them out were
M. W. or maybe W. M.”
"Maida Waring," I whispered to Asey. “Mrs. Howe,
didn't you ask her name?”
"Well, I did the best's I could without seeming rude.
I called her Miss Um and Mrs. Um, but she wouldn't
supply her name. And I suggested she write in my
visitors' book,-I always keep one because it's kind
of nice to see who people are and where they hail
from, but she said she was in too much of a hurry.
She said she had to see some one in Provincetown and
she hadn't time.”
"Mrs. Howe, you've been real helpful,” Asey said.
“But if that woman turns up again will you see we find
out about it before she has time to leave?" .
Mrs. Howe promised that she would, and we de-
parted for home.
“This situation," I said, "begins to get itself com-
plicated. If that was Maida Waring and she was
going to see some one in Provincetown and if the mys-
as


144
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
terious William K. Brown, or Kurth, if it is Kurth, was
also going to Provincetown— "
"It'd look,” Asey finished for me, "like they was
something afoot, bein' as how there's bees where's
honey. Funny they both wanted to come an' see you,
and funnier still they just came, willy-nilly. Well,
things is pickin' up."
As we turned up the lane we met Betsey and Dot in
the small car.
“Where you goin' now?” Asey asked.
“We finally found the people who were playing tennis
on the courts yesterday. That is, we found out who
they were and it seems that they're staying at the hotel,
so we're going to see if we can find them there. Shall
we keep on if they're not? I mean, shall we put on the
bloodhound act?”
“Yup,” said Asey, "if you don't have to track too
far.”
“And what are you two closed-mouth ones in your
swell barouche going to do?”
"These bloodhounds," said Asey with a grin, "are
havin' a rest period for the time bein'. All work an'
no play's contrary to the constitution. Git along in
your thimble, you two, an' don't let no sea-gull take
you for a minnow an' carry you away."
Up at the house we found Emma, placidly counting
stitches.
"Horatius has absolutely nothing to report. Your
only visitors have been the paper boy and an itinerant
se


THE DOCTOR AND HIS NOTES 145
fruit-seller who had an argument with Olga about ripe
bananas. And young Mr. Sullivan has taken a leaf
out of your book and put barbed wire about the cabin.
People were simply milling about it. Oh, yes, and I
can't find two stitches I lost yesterday. I'm going to
sue that awful railroad. And, dear me, I quite forgot
the most important thing."
“What's that?"
"Olga made a discovery. Not two seconds ago.”
“What did she discover?".
“She found the hammer we lent Sanborn,” Emma
announced triumphantly. "Wasn't that clever of her?”
“What?” Asey and I looked at each other in aston-
ishment.
"Yes, here it is.” She passed over a hammer, an
exact replica of the one Sullivan had showed us.
“Where in blazes did she find it?”
"Out by the garbage hole, beyond the beach grass."
There are no garbage collectors on Cape Cod and
one either burns refuse and hopes that the wind may
not turn, or else one buries it in a hole. We used the
latter method and our hole was about a hundred feet
beyond the kitchen.
I took the hammer from Asey and looked at it closely.
On the handle was a smear that had been made by a
hand rubbing pencil marks. The writing, if it had
been writing, was quite obliterated.
"What are you two looking so puzzled about? It
is the hammer, isn't it?”


146
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“I don't know. You see, Sullivan has already found
a hammer beneath the front seat of Bill's car, and I
have identified it and said it was the one we gave San-
born."
Emma opened her eyes wide. “That's interesting,
interesting indeed! But couldn't this still be the one?”
"It could,” I said. “It's new and the smear of pencil
mark is about the same size as the other. And Betsey
always uses soft pencils. I think I remember wonder-
ing this afternoon why the writing on the hammer Sulli-
van showed us wasn't more smudged. But I have iden-
tified it as ours and I don't suppose for one moment
that it would do any good to show this to Sullivan, do
you, Asey?”
"I don't cal'late 'twould. He'd just sit an' laugh an'
say it was our idea to get Bill off. We can't prove this
is the one you loaned him, an' you already said the other
was the one anyway.”
“What'll we do about it?"
"Nothin', I guess, right now. I reckon we'll ask
Olga about that tramp."
He called her out from the kitchen.
“You been thinkin' about who that stranger was
you met yesterday?"
She nodded.
"Remembered who he looked like yet?”
Again she nodded.
“Well, for the love of heaven," exclaimed Asey, “who
in time was he like anyway?"


THE DOCTOR AND HIS NOTES 147
"He looks like Mr. Sanborn," said Olga complacently.
Asey got up and solemnly, to Olga's surprise and
our astonishment, kissed her on both cheeks.
"An',” he added, "if I had a medal I'd give it to you
too. But since I ain't got any, I'll give you this." He
peeled five bills from his wallet. "Information like that
comes to five dollars the word. It's worth more, but
times is hard."
Olga looked inquiringly at me. I told her to take it.
She nodded her thanks. “I'll guess I know you
again,” she said coyly to Asey and went back to her
work.
"I guess," Asey stood up, "that now we'll begin to
investigate this bum situation in a big way. Mrs.
Manton, we'll leave you to play the waitin' game for us
again.”
"I delight in it,” she informed him. "It's the only
game I ever played that took absolutely no effort what-
soever. You don't even have to sharpen pencils. But
you'd better wait a minute. There's some one letting
down the barrier for a car."
I looked, hoping it would be the touring car with
Kurth, but it was only the doctor. In white linen
knickerbockers and a tweed coat he looked more like
a banker at the nineteenth hole than a country prac-
titioner.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted us. "I've been doing
my duty as medical examiner and I have some things
I want to ask you about.”
S
m


148 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"You still stick to your idea of a bash on the skull?"
Asey asked.
"A blow at the base of the skull,” the doctor corrected.
“Yes. I was sure last night and now I'm positive.
There's no trace of poison and no trace of heart failure
or any other natural cause." He launched into a
lengthy description. “And I hear that Sullivan has
found the hammer and that things look bad for Bill.”
"He has found one hammer," I said, "but we have
found its twin brother." I showed him what Olga had
brought to light.
"Amazing," said the doctor. "Now all you need is
to find another sardine tin and prove that Bill was just
picking daisies and didn't go near the cottage at all.
Did you see the crowd up-town?”.
"Not since this morning. How is Bill getting
along?—I hear he is now in a box-car."
"That's right. And people are crowding around it as
though it were a six-headed calf. They've had to call
in a dozen extra to handle traffic, and as each of the
dozen has his own individual thoughts on the direc-
tion of traffic, it's pretty messy. But every one's quiet
and peaceful. I think they're stunned more than any-
thing else. And the place is simply running over with
reporters. They were on your trail, Miss Whitsby, but
I told them you were ill and under my care and not to
be disturbed. I think I said I'd have them arrested
if they bothered you. Possibly that will stop them from
annoying you.”


150 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
visited you and Betsey here once or twice when you had
that cottage down by the hollow? And wasn't he a
classmate of Jimmy Porter?"
I looked at Asey who nodded ever so slightly behind
the doctor's back.
“Yes,” I said, "I knew him, and he visited us."
"I thought so," said the doctor with some satisfaction.
"I am rarely mistaken in the matter of names.”
“You an' Addison Sims of Seattle,” Asey murmured.
"And,” the doctor went on, “then there is another
note, postmarked Boston and dated Wednesday, also
sent special delivery and delivered to Sanborn Wednes-
day evening. Its contents are so much like the other that
there's no need for reading it. But this one is from
a woman who wants him to clear something up, and
it's signed Maida Waring. Now, as I remember, wasn't
that the name of the woman Kurth married?”
I told him that it was.
The doctor beamed. “I thought so. Yes, I thought
I was right. Now, do you think that there might be
anything in those notes? Connected with the murder,
of course."
"I dunno,” Asey drawled. “They didn't come here,
did they, Miss Prue?”
I took my cue. "No, they didn't. And I don't think
they came down, or I should have seen them. I'm sure
they would have come to call. I don't think either of
them is in town." All that, I reflected, was true as far
as it went.


THE DOCTOR AND HIS NOTES 151
“That's too bad,” said Reynolds. “I mean, I thought
that it might lead to something. Probably it's only
a business note, though of course it is a coincidence.
And why doesn't Kurth's wife sign herself with her full
name?”
“Lucy Stone league,” I extemporized.
"A lot of nonsense, too,” said the doctor. “Why
a woman shouldn't take her husband's name is beyond
me. These new notions are the limit, if you ask me.
Take the declining birth-rate.”
“I know," I said hurriedly. "It's disgraceful.”
"It's going to be the ruin of this country," said
the doctor. "That's just what it's going to be. I'm
writing an article about it now for the Medical Journal."
We listened to a discussion on the declining birth-
rate. Asey at last had the courage to damn the flow
of words.
“Something else you had to ask about, Doc?"
“Oh, yes. I'd quite forgotten.” He fumbled in his
pocket and brought out an engagement ring. "It's
this. I happened to look inside. It says D. S. to D. C.
Aren't those the initials of Betsey's friend?”


CHAPTER X
THE OTHER HAMMER IS EXPLAINED
For a minute we were silent. "Yes," I said hol-
lowly, “they are.”
“But I don't see as it means much,” Asey reflected.
"She said she'd known him in New York, but you
know, Doc, there's probably a thousand people in that
place with the same initials.”
Emma opened her mouth as though to speak but
Asey gave her a barely perceptible wink and she re-
sumed her knitting.
"You don't put any stock in these notes and in the
ring, then?" the doctor asked. He was a little ruffled.
"Truthfully," I told him, “I don't think that they
are of much value. Now, if John and Maida had come
to town, I feel sure I should have seen them. For all
we know, Sanborn might have written them and told
them what they wanted to know without their coming
down. And as for those initials, I happen to know that
Dot's middle name is Stevens and she nearly always
signs herself D.S.C., because they used to tease her
about it at school and call her the district street cleaner.
I'm sure we would have known had she been engaged
to Sanborn, and if that were her ring, there would be
the other initial.”
152


THE OTHER HAMMER IS EXPLAINED 153
"Well, if you feel that way about it, I suppose that
it's all right.” Doctor Reynolds rose. “But I'd heard
that you and Asey were riding around trying to find
things out, and believing with you that Bill is innocent,
I thought some of these might help you out. If you
don't want help, you don't, I suppose."
I assured him such was not the case, served iced tea,
and by the time he left he was feeling less hurt.
"Why didn't you tell him about things?” Emma
asked.
"I'd like to of,” Asey answered, “but the whole town,
including Slough Sullivan, would have known about it
in ten minutes after he left here. Then they'd have
come an' dragged Dot into it an' probably they'd dish
all chance of our gettin' at Kurth ourselves.”
"Dot didn't tell us that the engagement had been
broken," I remarked. “According to her, this was just
a temporary quarrel, and they were still engaged. I
wonder when she gave him back his ring. Maybe he
hadn't given it to her at all.”
"It was worn,” Asey said. "I noticed that, so I
guess he had. What I wonder is, when did she give it
to him, an' if she give it to him yesterday?”
He pulled out his time schedule. “'Cordin' to this
she could have gone easy over to the cabin yesterday
when she wants us to believe she was lookin' at that
boat. Could she have given it to him before?"
"Not when he came over here yesterday afternoon.
How about down on the beach?" I asked Emma.


154 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“She couldn't have then. I was with them and so
was Betsey, the whole time they were together. I'm
positive she couldn't have had a chance. And she
was with one or the other of us all the rest of the time,
unless it was from the time Betsey left her to go to
the store till you saw her in the kitchen.”
"Hm. Was that true about her middle initial?"
“It used to be. She always made a great show of
it. But I noticed that her luggage was marked D.C.,
and when I commented on it, she said she'd got tired
of the S and had dropped it for the time being."
“Then I guess it was her ring all right, don't you?”
"I don't think that there's any doubt of it,” I said.
"Cur'user an' cur'user. Well, we'll be off again.
Don't loose no more stitches ’n you can help, Mrs.
Manton."
We got once more into the car. Asey headed out of
town, following the King's Highway that led up the
Cape.
"Where are you going?” I asked.
"I'm goin' to make a call on ole man Rider over
Eastham way," he said.
“The hermit?"
“Yup. Seems to me we ought to find out about this
brother. I guess it must of been him that Olga saw
all right, an' if he's a bum or on the road, ole man
Rider'll know all about him. They ain't many tramps
on the road he don't know about. They ali stop at his
place for food.”


THE OTHER HAMMER IS EXPLAINED 155
"But will he let you in or talk to you? I thought
he wouldn't see any one, let alone indulge in conversa-
tion."
“'S a lot of talk. He wouldn't come out if you was
to bang on his door from now to the end of next week.
He don't like ladies one bit. An' he don't care much
for all the trippers that come an' look at his house.
What if a man does want to live in a place made out o'
vines an' driftwood an' papered with newspapers? It's
his business, ain't it? Ole man Rider's a nice ole man,
for all his ec-centric'ty. I brought in his dory once
after it broke the anchor rope in a storm, an' I been
clammin' an' fishin' with him lots o' times. He's real
amiable if you don't go to 'noy him."
"I thought he turned that brute of a dog after every
one who came near him.”
"He don't. I been there an' seen him feed three or
four fellers off the road at a time. I don't know why
he does it, but he does. If he ain't heard of this Schon-
brun, then he ain't on Cape Cod an’ we're barkin' up
the wrong tree. That ole feller he knows a lot more'n
people give him credit for knowin'. There's some say
he don't know's the Civil War's over, but I bet he
knows more right now about this business than we do.”
"I wonder why he doesn't like women," I said.
Asey cocked his head and looked at me. “Crossed in
love, I cal'late. Or his wife run away with another
man or he couldn't get the woman he loved. There's al-
ways somethin' like that back of a queer seemin' man.”


156 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Why, Asey! I do believe you're romantic. I had
an idea you didn't hold with love and things like that?"
"Ain't I had to listen to Bill Porter," Asey de-
manded, “moon on about that niece of yours for long's
I can remember? Say, Miss Prue, they used to be a
cap'n on a coastin' schooner I cooked for once. He
stood six feet three an' a half in his stockin' feet an'
he could lick any man in a rough an' tumble this side
o' Hades. He went an' fell in love with a girl that
waited on table in a dirty caffey in Galveston, Texas,
'bout as big as a pint o' cider, she was. An' she could
make that man more miser'ble than you'd believe. I've
seen him set down an' cry after gettin' a letter from
her. He finally took to drinkin' an' the last I ever
heard of him he was sittin' on a park bench in New
York City tryin' to work a drink out o'passers-by. An'
him that was one of the best sailors on the coast. All
on account of a thus-an-so in Galveston he could snap
in two with his little finger that didn't care a rap for
him. No, Miss Prue, I ain't bein' romantic attall.
That's just something I know about for sure when a
man's queer-like.”
He turned the auto off in to a tiny path bordered
with scrub pines. “I don't dast to take this ark of a
car any farther in here than this, so I'll leave you here.
Bill might get mad if I scratched up his pretty paint.
You could listen to the radio if you wanted to. The
little round button like an acorn turns it on.”
I heard the crackling of bushes as he disappeared


THE OTHER HAMMER IS EXPLAINED 157
OUS
out of sight. I hunted for the radio control and turned
it on. With much effort I finally got a Boston station.
A newspaper broadcaster was telling of a murder on
Cape Cod.
"Millionaire son of automobile pioneer kills famous
scribe in cabin. Local sheriff is using a pillory for a jail
on picturesque Cape Cod."
I switched the thing off. If heaven, I thought, ever
caught me reading another murder mystery, it would
have a perfect right to strike me dead with a thunder-
bolt. I watched the little spot of bay I could see through
the trees. In spite of all that had occurred the water
was just as sparkling and blue as ever, the sky was just
as perfect. I reflected that the Pilgrims must have
found some compensation on those bleak stormy strands
after all.
Asey came back.
"Did he know about anything? Has the brother
come to his hut? What did you find out?"
“Did he know anything, Miss Prue? Like I said,
he knows more about this than you an' me do. He says
there was a man ate dinner here yesterday noon who
might have been the one we want. He didn't want to
tell me much, but I finally persuaded him. It was Bill's
father, you know, who give him the land he has his
hut on, an' when I pointed out how bad 'twas for Bill,
he told me. 'Cordin' to him, this man as might be
the brother was goin' to hitch hike down to Province-
town. 'Pears to me like every one we're after is goin'


158 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
down to Provincetown. I should think that the place'd
be full to overflowin'. Anyways, Rider says it's dollars
to doughnuts he'll be back this way to-night.”
“When? How can we get hold of him?”
“Rider's goin' to pull a Paul Revere.”
“What do you mean
"He's goin' to hang a lantern up in that tall elm
tree way back of his hut. We can see it from your hill,
an' then we'll go poppin' after him an' bring him back.”
"It sounds all right, but how can you get him to
come? And how will you make him stay?”
“Sufficient unto the day is the deed thereof, as the
feller used to say. I don't know, but I'll see to it that
we do an' he does. Now, we might's well's not go
back.”
In the village he stopped at the dry-goods store and
came out with a parcel under one arm. “It's a part
of the game,” he said in response to my question.
“Now, we'll see if we can find out anything more from
Mister Western Onion.”
He emerged from the telegraph office with a look of
disgust on his face. “Feller Jimmy told me to wire
has gone an’ went t' Yurrop an' the feller I wired out
West can't be found. An' Jimmy says he was goin'
to fly down here to-morrow, but he can't make it. You
know, Jimmy he may be a crack business man an' all
that, but he sure ain't a real Porter like Bill an' his pa
an' grandpa. They never would of left me with Bill
like this to get him out of a scrape all by myself, an'


THE OTHER HAMMER IS EXPLAINED 159
with you. I sh'd think Jimmy might of forgotten about
his dummed old automobiles for once.”
I agreed with him.
“All he thinks of,” Asey went on, "is makin' money
an' money an' still more money. Don't see what he's
goin' to do with it all after he gets it made. What's
the use of him havin' any more than he's got already?
When you get as much as that they ain't nothin' left in
the world you can't have if you want it, an' then, poof-
you don't want it. Well, I s'pose it can't be helped.”
The crowd outside the rope was still larger. Asey
smiled as the necks craned in our direction. “I cal'late
we'll have to put up barb wire soon.”
Emma and Betsey were sitting on the porch. From
their expression I gathered something had gone amiss.
“What's the matter?”
"Hell to pay,” said Betsey briefly. "Listen to this.
We went to the hotel and found those people who had
been using the courts yesterday afternoon. They came
back early from South Yarmouth-they'd been play-
ing golf. I asked them if they remembered seeing any
one come down the lane at about a quarter to five
yesterday. They thought a while, then said no, they
didn't remember seeing a soul. And then the woman
up and announced that a girl had come out the front
of the house and fitted around back of the garage.
Said she remembered it because it caught her eye and
spoiled her service at set point. Said the girl came
dashing back a little bit later and was on the porch for


160 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
a few seconds before she went in. She noticed that
because it was just as they were leaving. What do
you think of that?”
"Not so good,” said Asey. "Not so dum good at
all. What did Dot say to it?"
"She flew into a tantrum and has gone up-stairs.
Presumably to recover. But it would seem to shoot
her story full of holes like a target, wouldn't it?"
"It certainly would,” I said. "But are they sure it
was Dot?”
“They said she had a white dress on. Dot was
wearing white."
“So was I," said Emma.
“But,” Betsey grinned, "if you'll forgive my men-
tioning it, I don't think they'd have called you a girl
or said that you flitted. Nor would you dash. You
know perfectly well you don't dash.”
“You have me there."
"It must of been Dot all right,” said Asey. "So she
got mad, did she?"
"Mad as a hatter. What'll we do?”
Asey shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know as we
can do much of anything. If she was a man I'd beat
the truth out of her, but bein' as how she ain't, I can't.
We'll wait until she recovers an' see what a little polite
questionin'll do."
"Hey, look!” Betsey exclaimed. "Here's a car with
a man in it and a state cop."
We looked down to the fringe of the crowd, where a


162 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
But I'm sure that's the car, aren't you?” he appealed.
"I think so," and I hoped I wasn't as hot as I felt.
Emma spoke with assurance. “Undeniably that is
the car.” She looked admiringly at the policemen.
“And I think that you found it in record time.”
They beamed happily.
"Now, about the reward.” Asey pulled out his wal-
let for at least the fortieth time that day. "You'd
better leave the car right here an' go back to your
patrol. If anything comes up about it, you let us
know. That's the car all right, an' I'll bet Miss Cram'll
be pretty glad to get it back. I'll see to it that she
writes your cap'n an' tells him about how quick you
was in findin' it.”
They accepted the bills and conferred in an under-
tone. "Ordinarily,” said the one who had done all the
talking, "we shouldn't do this, but we'll take your word
for this being Miss Cram's car and I guess everything
will be all right.”
"Thank you so much,” I smiled.
They touched their caps. “Glad to be of service
to you. It was luck that we noticed it.”
As they started down the steps Asey added, "If the
chap that took this should turn up an' make a fuss,
not knowin' that we spotted him an' found out about
things so soon, will you bring him up to us before you
do anything about it?”
"Sure. He'll have a lot of explaining to do all around
when we get him."


THE OTHER HAMMER IS EXPLAINED 163
They chugged down the hill on the motor-cycle and
streamed away up the beach road.
“Now, you horse thieves,” said Emma, “what's the
meaning of all this?”
Asey enlightened them about Kurth. Emma seemed
surprised. "So there might have been something in
the doctor's note, the one from Kurth to Sanborn, after
all? That's odd. But what good is it for you to have
his car? How do you expect to get him?”.
"Oh,” said Asey airily, "he'll report it as stolen an'
then the cops'll bring him here. It'll save us a lot
of gallopin' all over the map to get it done that way.”
"I'm just about ten miles behind you on all this,”
Betsey said. “Why don't you two break down and
tell Emma and me all?”
"Might as well, I reckon, if it don't go no farther.
I mean Dot.” In a few words he gave them the sum
total of our day's discoveries.
"How perfectly thrilling,” said Betsey. "Then you
have Kurth and Maida and this hobo who might be the
brother all sort of nibbling at the cheese, haven't you?"
“Yup, only I can't say as I think we got this Kurth's
wife anywhere near a nibble even. But I got a feelin'
she may turn up of her own accord.”
"Listen,” said Betsey suddenly. "About the sec-
ond hammer. I think I can explain that."
“How?"
"Well, you know last week I took the corner of the
garage door off, backing out?”


164 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“With your cream jug?" asked Asey disgustedly.
“Betsey, you'd ought to be 'rested for cruelty to ani-
mules.”
“Yes. But listen while I tell you. The agent said
we'd have to pay for things like that, so I went up and
got Simpkins, the undertaker's brother that's a car-
penter, and got him to patch it up. Well, it's one he
left behind."
“How'd you know?”.
“Because the next day I met him outside of the
post-office and he said he'd lost a hammer and had any
of us seen it. Of course I said no. I don't go delving
about for unknown hammers as a general thing. And
don't you remember he sent us a bill next day and how
we thought it was awfully large? Well, though it didn't
occur to me at the time, don't you suppose he was
charging us for the hammer? He probably thought
we'd swiped it."
Asey nodded emphatically. “Then that's most likely
it. What kind of a hammer was it?”
"He told me it was a brand-new hammer and he'd
made a mark on it. That explains the smear."
"Fair enough,” said Asey. "Well, that seems to
be the one thing we really found out to-day, an' I can't
see as how it's a great help toward freein' Bill even
though it may kind of relieve our minds a little.”
It was at this point that Olga announced dinner, and
for the third meal that day Asey was our guest. Dot
said she didn't want anything to eat, but she made


THE OTHER HAMMER IS EXPLAINED 165
a very thorough job of the full tray Olga took up to
her.
After dinner we sat on the porch, Asey with the bin-
oculars glued in the direction of the hermit's hut across
the bay.
"Have you,” Emma asked, "any real feeling about
who the murderer is?”
I told her that at the moment, as far as I could see,
Dot was more complicated than any one else in the
affair, with the exception of Bill.
"I'm sure she didn't do it," Betsey stated. “She
may have gone over there and been afraid to admit it,
thinking that in our zeal to get Bill off, we might pick
on her. But if she bad done it, she's the sort who
would lie well and brazen it out. She wouldn't go in
for fainting and near hysteria and lies that a two-year
child would be ashamed to make up.”
"Wait up a bit,” cried Asey excitedly. "I see a
light. Yup. It's Rider's lantern all right. Come on,
Miss Prue, grab a coat an' hustle. You an' me is goin'
after the errant brother.”
He went inside and switched the living-room lights
off and on as a signal to the hermit. Betsey ran for
my jacket and a lap-robe for it was getting chilly out-
side.
Asey brought the roadster around to the front
door.
“If Kurth should turn up, tell him some cock-an'-
bull tale about us playin' a joke on him an’ wantin' him


166 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
to make sure he'd visit us. Pay the cops some more if
you have to, but keep that feller here till we get back.”
The long roadster sped down the hill. Asey tooted
the horn. “Well, I cal'late we'll get where we want to
get, maybe perhaps, after all,” he announced.


CHAPTER XI
AT THE HERMIT'S HUT
WE STOPPED as before on the pine bordered path.
Asey untied the bundle he had bought at the dry-goods
store. To my joy it proved to be a complete police-
man's outfit, child's size, which I knew had been a part
of the window display for at least fifteen years.
"What on earth,” I asked him, “do you expect to
do with that fancy dress? You're not going to put it
on, are you? It wouldn't fit on your little finger."
"Nope," he returned composedly. "I ain't aimin'
to put it on, but I needed the badge as goes with it.
I thought it would make too much talk if I went an'
asked for that alone, so I had to buy the whole dum
thing. They thought I was plumb crazy. But badges
don't grow on bushes like. beach plums, an' I couldn't
very well ask Sullivan for the loan of his.”
"Do you suppose that Schonbrun, if it is he, is going
to be taken in by that toy?"
"Dunno. I cal'late maybe he will. This'll shine
an' flash easy as anything else will, an' I don't have to
let him examine it close. Rider burns candles any-
how at night an' that'll help some.”
“But will he come if you just show that to him?"
"Can't never tell the fear of the law a feller's got
167


168 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
till you flash a badge on him. I remember readin'
about a man who captured a train robber once out
West just by drawin' his coat back a little an' lettin'
his suspender catch gleam in the sun for a second. An’
besides, a badge kind o adds dignity. I ain't got no
uniform like Slough," he chuckled, "but I got a badge
an' I guess I look's much like a sheriff as he does, even
if I ain't got a bay window. Shouldn't wonder if there
wasn't a pistol in this outfit, too."
He thrust the badge into his pocket and started off.
"If I don't get to come back in a reasn'ble time,
you take that car an' go after some one."
· "Do you think that there's any danger?”
“Nope. But I don't want you to come philanderin'
after me."
I wrapped the robe about me and proceeded to wait.
I repeated Mr. Milton's poem about those also serving
who only stood and waited. I counted to four hundred
and ninety-four by thirteens. As I am very dull about
figures that took up time beautifully.
A rabbit scampered through the underbrush. I
caught a fleeting glimpse of his tail by the vague light
of the dimmers Asey had left on. I turned on the
radio, but the same newspaper broadcaster I had heard
before was gloating over the discovery of a hammer in
the possession of William Hendricks Porter, arrested
for the murder of the famous novelist, Dale Sanborn. I
wondered if every newspaper broadcaster was engaged
in shouting unpleasant news about Bill to the world at


AT THE HERMIT'S HUT 169
large. I fished in the pocket of my jacket and found
an aged candy bar. I ate the cheap conglomeration of
nuts and dubious chocolate. I figured out the ingre-
dients and their cost and the average profit per dozen
bars. I was inventing a new candy to be called Infant
Joy after the child in the poem who had no name but
was three days old, when I heard Asey coming back. In
another five minutes I should have been quite insane.
I switched on the headlights and the big searchlight.
Behind Asey was another figure.
"This gent’man,” said Asey with a touch of pride
in his voice, “is Mister Abraham Schonbrun. Mister
Schonbrun, this lady is Miss Whitsby.”
The gentleman grunted. “Well, what of it? What
you want with me out here, huh?”
“Want just to ask you some questions,” said Asey.
"Look here, brother, you get me out here with some
story about hearin' something to my advantage an'
you say you're the sheriff of this hick burg. Snap into
it. What's to my advantage; what you want to know?”
"You got a brother named David Schonbrun?"
“What's it to you?” He met Asey's gaze. “Well,
supposin' I have, and what then?”
"Nothin', 'cept he's dead.”
"Jeese, I know that. Been dead a long time.” Schon-
brun started back along the path but Asey caught hold
of his arm.
“Not so fast, feller, not so fast. I mean your brother,
not the guy that was shot to pieces in Lowell.”


170 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“What are you drivin' at?” Schonbrun asked sullenly.
"I tell you my brother died a long time ago.”
"Come, come,” said Asey pleasantly. "You don't
deny that Dale Sanborn was your brother, do you?”
Schonbrun looked at him quickly. “My brother's
name was just like mine. I don't know anything
about any guy named Sanborn. What'd you think, my
family all had different names or something? We
didn't, see?”
"Look here, you be reasn'ble. You know Dale San-
born was your brother David Schonbrun. An' he got
killed yesterday. An' he left some money, too. An' if
you'd stop bein' nasty, who knows but what you might
get some of it? Or ain't you needin' any cash these
days?”
“Sanborn was my brother, an' he got bumped off
yesterday?” The surprise in Schonbrun's voice was
forced.
“Yup. An' now are you goin' to answer some ques-
tions an' get somethin' out of it, or ain't you?"
"Well, if he was my brother, I guess I ought to have
what's left. When was he killed, huh?"
“Yesterday afternoon. Seems kind of unlikely you
wouldn't know about it, what with the whole Cape
buzzin' like a beehive on the subject. Where you been
since you was here yesterday afternoon?"
Schonbrun hesitated.
“Where?”
“Went down to Provincetown and then came back.”


AT THE HERMIT'S HUT
171
“You passed through Wellfleet, then, didn't you?
Didn't you see that feller in the pillory? Didn't you
hear nothin' about the murder?"
"I saw the guy in the framework all right, but I
was on the tail of a truck an' I didn't have any one to
ask about it. I didn't know about any killin'."
“Was that goin' down or comin' back?"
“That was goin' down. There wasn't any one there
when I come back."
"An' you didn't hear nothing about this in Province-
town?”
“Naw."
"Didn't even read a paper?”
“Naw, I didn't hear anything about it.”
"Mr. Schonbrun,” I remarked to Asey, “does not
appear to be particularly upset about the fate of his
brother, if it was his brother."
"Aw Jeese,” said Schonbrun, “that guy was my
brother, if you're so crazy to know. Only I didn't know
he was till lately. I thought he was dead."
“When'd you find it out?” Asey demanded,
“Oh, I don't know."
"I cal'late it was maybe when you saw him upun
in his car yesterday, wasn't it?
He repeated his question more sharply. "Wanti'
it?”
“You hicks is muley. Yes, it yea ya the Water #."
"Speak to him?"
"No, I didn't. I wouldn't have known *WWith


172 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
OLU
Can
if he hadn't been so mad at something. He used to
have a mustache, too. He had swell clothes on when
I seen him yesterday. Say, do you think I can rate
his money?"
"See here,” said Asey as though the thought had just
occurred to him. “You can come back with us an
talk this over an' tell us a few things about your
brother, an' I'll see you get everything. How's that?”
Schonbrun laughed. “Yeah. An' because I said I
was his brother, you'd have me pinned up in a wooden
neckband in two secs. Yeah. I'd be apt to come
back with you. No, mister. You ask me what you got
to ask me right here, see? An' then when the things is
all settled, you hand me over the money then, see?”
“Reckon not,” said Asey, shaking his head. “Can't
do that.”
Schonbrun considered. "Well, if I come with you,
you won't get me mixed up in this?”
"Don't see as how we can anyhows, less'n you was
mixed up in it to begin with. Nope, we won't put you
in the stocks, if that's what you mean. You don't
seem much cut up about this. Wasn't you an' him
friendly?”
“Friendly? Say, that's a hot one, that is. Say,
listen, brother, I don't know whether the guy you
caught done this or not, but listen, I'd like to shake
him by the hand if he did. Who done this job done
a good turn to me.”
“We'll take your word for it,” said Asey. "Well,


AT THE HERMIT'S HUT
173
are you goin' to come along an' see if you can get
what's comin' to you? He had a car an' some money
an' they's probably a lot more lyin' around in banks.
Then there's things like a watch an' a gold cigarette
case ”
"Platinum," said Schonbrun absently.
“What do you mean, platinum?” I asked.
"Oh,” he faltered, "I don't know what made me say
that. I just guessed, that's all.”
"Lookey here," demanded Asey, "you were to the
cabin where he lived yesterday, weren't you?”
"Naw, I wasn't,” Schonbrun snarled. “An' I ain't
goin' to stand here an' get asked any more questions,
neither. See? All you two want is to get me behind
bars somewhere. That's all. All this talk about money
is just a lot of hooey, an' I'm leavin' right now."
He turned swiftly but Asey grabbed him.
"Cal’late the little pitcher done went once too often
to the well. Give yourself away, din' you?”
"I didn't give myself away, see? I ain't got nothin'
to give myself away about.”
As Asey turned to say something to me, Schonbrun
twisted from his hold and freed himself. He tripped
Asey neatly, and before the latter knew what was hap-
pening, Schonbrun was on top of him. Now Asey was
physically strong enough, but he was no match for
Schonbrun, younger by thirty-odd years.
Remembering how I had always loathed women who
sat by in the moving pictures and never bothered them-


174 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
selves to lift a hand while the hero and the villain
fought, I looked vainly around for a weapon. The
zipper catch in the car pocket chose that moment to
get itself stuck. I couldn't budge it. And in spite of
my frantic efforts, the front seat of the car would not be
pushed out. I had some half-formed notion in my mind
of grabbing a wrench and banging Schonbrun over the
head with it.
Schonbrun, in the meantime, had picked up a pine
branch and was laying it forcefully over Asey's head
and shoulders. With a sudden rush of intelligence I
remembered the toy pistol. I rummaged, gripped it
firmly in my hand. Walking up behind Schonbrun I
stuck it in the small of his back. In a voice I did not
recognize as my own I demanded, “Lay off that man!
Hands up!”
To my everlasting joy he did not turn around.
"O. K., lady. 0. K. 0. K. Don't jab that thing
into me."
"Get up,” I commanded. "If you turn around I'll
shoot. And I know how to handle this thing."
I held the gun against him and turned to look at
Asey who was getting up from the ground with diffi-
culty. His face and neck were bruised and bleeding,
but he managed to smile. "Ain't so good as I used to
be in a thing like that. You keep him there a second
more, Miss Prue, an' I'll get something to tie him
with.”
Unearthing some more of the rope he had used for


AT THE HERMIT'S HUT
175
our barrier, he bound Schonbrun's hands tightly be-
hind him and tied his feet so that he could walk just
a few inches at a time.
Asey took the pistol from me. "March," he said
briefly. "Into the car with you. Nope. Right on to
the front seat. Miss Prue, I'm 'fraid you got to do the
drivin'. I'll show you the tricks about shiftin' the
gears."
He shoved Schonbrun unceremoniously into the front
seat.
“But you're all covered with blood, Asey. And
something ought to be bound around your head.”
Feeling a little like a Revolutionary War heroine, the
kind who were always bandaging people up with their
underthings, I lifted my skirt, took a nail file from
my pocketbook and with it tore the hem from my white
silk petticoat. As I tied up his head I reflected that
Betsey would now have no reason to scoff at my petti-
coats for some time to come.
I got into the driver's seat and cautiously started
the car. Asey gave directions, with one eye on me
and the other on our unenthusiastic guest. I had
finally and with no small trouble achieved the fourth
speed before Schonbrun wakened to the fact that my
gun was an innocuous cap pistol and possibly the least
deadly thing in existence.
"Hell,” he said disgustedly, "was that the thing you
poked into my back?”.
Asey gave a one-sided grin. “Yup, that was it.”


176 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Jeese,” said Schonbrun, "you yokels take the cake,
you do. You get your man.”
“Usually we do.” Asey smiled at me. “But like I
always say, we have to have help.”
I asked him in a whisper what we were going to do
with the man now that we had him.
"Oh, we'll take him long 'v us. Bird in hand, you
know. Like the lady in the Bible, whither we goest,
he will go an' whither he goest, we'll be there too.”
“I suppose,” Schonbrun remarked bitterly, “that you
ain't a cop, neither.”
“Gettin' right caught up, ain't you? Yup, you sup-
posed right. But you ought to thank your lucky stars
we ain't cops. You'd be in worse than you are now.
Miss Prue, you go up along the back road and stop at
the side entrance to the doctor's. I'll have to let him
spread a little salve or something on these here wounds
of mine. That is, if he ain't gallivantin' around tryin'
to find out about them notes."
He emerged from the doctor's looking like a figure
from the Spirit of '76. “These pill pedlers are a cur'us
lot,” he remarked. “Wanted to know how I got this
way an' who biffed me over the head, an’ whose silk
petticoat I was wearin' an' I don't know what all."
“What did you tell him?"
"Told him 'twas an honor'ble wound received in the
course o' action. I didn't tell him no more, an' he was
awful' mad. Charged me double. I think he guesses
Slough an' me had a little run-in. An' he's kind of


AT THE HERMIT'S HUT 177
mad we won't let him in on all we're doin'. Never saw
a man so wantin' to be in the thick of things as he is.”
“What's on the docket now?” Schonbrun asked.
“What you goin' to do with me?”.
"I'd like real well to stick you in irons but I can't
do it. Besides, you got a lot to tell your captors 'bout
your brother an' so on. I guess you just got to come
with us. An' I wouldn't make no noise about it if I
was you because it'll only go a whole lot harder for
you.”
We rode back to the cottage in silence. The crowd
outside had dispersed to some extent and in the dusk
they did not appear to notice either Asey's bandages
or our prisoner.
Emma and Betsey were in the living-room, playing
cards. Dot was still up in her room.
“Back again?” Emma asked. “And who's your
unwilling victim? And what did Mr. Mayo bump
into?"
I explained.
"Now," said Asey, pushing Schonbrun into a chair
and taking a seat himself, “now suppose you just stop
tellin' lies an' let us know all about everything, like
when you saw your brother yesterday an' when you
came to the cabin an' all the rest. An' if you don't, I'll
take you up to Sullivan an' get you arrested as a sus-
pect.”
“An' if I tell you?”
"If you tell us a straight story an' prove that you


AT THE HERMITS ET 179
“An' where was you comit from when you bit bere?"
"Taunton. Things got hot for me in New York so I
came up to this part of the country. I got jailed in
Taunton an' I got out only last week, see? I was
goin' down to Provincetown to see a guy used to work
with me. I didn't have no money, an' I thought if that
was Dave I might be able to touch him for something.
So I hiked out here to see.”
"Meet any one on the way?"
"Sure I met people on the way.”
"I mean, did you talk with any one?”
"Naw," Schonbrun looked puzzled. “The guy told
me where he lived gave me good directions. I ast a
dumb Swede, but she couldn't talk English, if that's
what you mean. I saw the cabin about that time
anyhow."
“An' you went there?”
“Yeah. Wasn't any one there, so I sat down an'
waited. He come in an' took one look at me an'
picked up a hammer lyin' on the table an' said he'd
push it in my face if I didn't beat it. I didn't want
to get into a fuss so I beat it.”
"Didn't find anything on your way to the cabin,
did you?”
“Find anything? Naw."
“Sure you didn't?”
“Say, I was huntin' a guy I thought was my brother.
I wasn't huntin' for anything else.”
“Got any proof he was alive when you left him?"


180 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Naw, I didn't kill him, but I ain't got any proof.”
"Well, did you see anybody around the place when
you left?"
“There was a car comin' up. There was a guy in
it.”
"Must of been Bill,” Asey reflected. “Well, that
doesn't help Bill any, all this, does it?"
"No need to worry about that Porter guy,” said
Schonbrun. "He's got money enough to get out of
this.”
"How do you know about Bill Porter?”
“Know the name.” Schonbrun was altogether too
casual.
“But Bill was all I said. Not Bill Porter,” Asey
insisted.
"Listen, brother, why can't you forget about all this?
I'm all the family that brother of mine had, an' say, I
wouldn't make a fuss if some one chopped him up into
little pieces with an ax. It would be perfectly 0. K.
by me. An' even if that Porter guy is arrested, he can
get himself off.”
"So you did know about the murder," Asey com-
mented. "Well, what makes you think your brother
pretended to be dead?”
"I'll tell you the way I figured it out. You see,
he was in this strike racket an' he was in it pretty deep.
He was all for gettin' out, an' he couldn't. They
had him on the black list, an' everywhere he went, he
got into trouble. They knew too much about him. So


CHAPTER XII
MR. ABE SCHONBRUN
ASEY picked up the pin. “Where'd you get that?"
“What? That? Oh, yes. That pin, you mean?”
“Yup,” said Asey. "That pin I'm holdin' in my
hand. Not two other pins in Chicago. This here pin
now. Where'd you get it?”
“Why, I found that,” said Schonbrun glibly.
“Did, did you? When?".
"A long time ago. Several months ago. Picked it
up in the street, but there wasn't any chance of hockin'
it up around here so I kept it.”
"Sure you didn't find it yesterday afternoon? Right
here on the Cape?".
"Now, listen, brother. This ain't no way for you
to act at all, suspectin' everything you find.”
"Listen yourself," returned Asey. "Are you goin'
to tell me where an' when you found this an’ who it
belonged to, or am I goin' to trot you up to court on
Monday mornin' an' let you get indicted for murder?
You just think it over a little."
"Well,” said Schonbrun resentfully, "this afternoon
comin' back from Provincetown a lady give me a
lift. When I got out I must have picked it up or else
it just slipped into my pocket. It was hers."
183


184
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“An' I suppose it just slid into the furthest corner
of a pack of cigarettes. Yup. An' I thought you come
back on the tail of a truck.”
"Did I say that? That was goin' down. I drove
back with this lady."
"Ever see her before?"
"Naw, but she was a peach. She picked me up off
the road. Most ladies won't.”
“An' a little child shall lead 'em,” Asey murmured.
“How could you have picked it up an' not known about
it? How did it slip into your pocket? Did she give
it to you, or did you steal it?”.
"I never stole a thing in my life,” Schonbrun de-
clared. “Never. It just must of fell into my pocket.”.
“You didn't know the woman?”
"I think she said something about bein' a Mrs. Carey
of Indianapolis.”
Asey looked at him admiringly. "A truthful man's
as rare as a white crow anyhows, but I got to hand
it to you, Schonbrun. Of all the barefaced liars I ever
see in my life, you take the grand prize. If you won't
tell about the pin, we'll let it go for the time bein’.
You was sayin' that your brother wa'n't such a good
man."
"O. K.," said Schonbrun cheerfully. “Suits me fine.
About Dave. Well, after pa died he worked sellin'
papers an' things an' then he went to high school an'
worked afternoons. In a factory. Then one day he
come home an' packed up his things an' left. He took


MR. ABE SCHONBRUN
185
all the money ma had an' my bank too along with him.
We found out later he'd gone to college or something.
These guys he'd been working with at the factory had
introduced him to some other guys that sent him to
college an' paid his way. He never showed up more
than three or four times after that. An' he never paid
back the money he stole. That guy was a dirty,—well,
he was a dirty scum if ever there was one. An' do
you know what? About four years ago it was that
ma found this picture I told you about in the news-
paper. She thought it was him an' she wrote a letter,
but no one ever answered it at all.
"Well, we got on, she worked an? so did I. Then
about a year an' a half ago I got sick. There was
something the matter with my lungs, see, an' I had to
go to a hospital. Ma didn't have a lot of money an'
of course I couldn't do anything an' then we each of
us wrote another letter askin' if this Sanborn was Dave
an' to give us some money. Ma went to see him, but
he kicked her out of his swell apartment just the way
he kicked me yesterday. He said he'd call the police
if she bothered him again. So I thought then that it
wasn't Dave. I never really knew till yesterday, see?”
He lighted a cigarette with his free hand.
"An’ ma lost her job about that time, an' I got sicker
an’ nearly died. An' what do you think I found out
when I got well an' out of the hospital? She'd run out
o' money an' starved to death. She'd been so sure
that this Sanborn was Dave that she'd gone there again,


MR. ABE SCHONBRUN
187
Asey crowed happily. “I sort of hoped I could get
you even though I thought you'd made one good slip
to-night. Now, you went back to the cabin after you
left the first time, didn't you?”.
Schonbrun looked at Asey admiringly. “Jeese, you
ain't such a fool, are you?”
"Only on the outside. Let us in on visit number
two. You got along a ways an' then you remembered
the platinum case, didn't you? Or the watch? An’
you said to yourself that you was kind of a chump to
beat it as quick as you had? Was that it?”
"Yeah."
Emma looked at Asey in astonishment. “Elucidate,
dear Sherlock. What drove you to that conclusion?"
"Well, from the way this feller has been talkin',
he reminds me of a man I used to know out in Alex-
andria, Egypt. He lied like the ole Harry, but he was
a persistent sort. Nothin' much of a hero about him,
fact he was a little coward, just like this feller. An'
it 'peared to me that if he was in Schonbrun's shoes
he'd think 'n' act just that way. I don't think this
feller has thethe," he searched for a word, "the in-
nerds, to kill his brother. If he had, he'd 'a' done it a
long time ago. But I knew he'd be the sort that'd go
beggin' back again."
Schonbrun seemed to take no offense at Asey's analy-
sis of him. “I thought like that,” he said. “I thought
I'd go back an' have another try. I was goin' to tell
him I'd tell people who he was if he didn't come across.”


188 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“Blackmail,” I said.
“Well, lady, you can call it blackmail if you like.
Anyway, I went back an' before I went around to the
front door I peeked in a window. He was layin' by the
side of the table, but there wasn't no blanket on him
when I saw him. I thinks to myself, some one's found
you out, buddy boy, an give you what you been askin'
for all these years. I wanted to go in an' take that
case an' see if he had any money, but I didn't. I was
scared some one would spot me doin' it an' then if I
tried to get rid of them there might be trouble. So
I beat it again."
“What time was it when you come back?"
"I don't know exactly. I heard a clock strike five.
It was that clock in town, that one on the church with
the green top.”
"Congregational church,” said Asey. "Yup. That's
the only one you can hear from this place an' it's always
right, bein’ as how it's electric. Did you hear it be-
fore or after you looked into the window?”.
“Quite a while before. I remember because I'd just
bu'sted my shoelace an' there was so little of it that
wasn't bu'sted that I had a hard time gettin' to mend
it any more.” He stuck out his feet in their dirty worn
oxfords. The laces were nothing but a series of knots.
I thought of his brother's hand-made footwear.
“An' so you thought some one had killed your
brother, but you weren't goin' to let any one know
anything about it?"


MR. ABE SCHONBRUN
189
"Not a chance. I didn't dare. See, the first thing
any one would do would be to put the bracelets on me.
An' I had enough of the wrong side of the bars in
Taunton. I wasn't cravin' another stretch with maybe
the chair at the end of it. But anyways, there wasn't
no wrappin' on him when I saw him.”
"See any one when you left the cottage the second
time?"
"Naw. I went around by the back of the cabin. I
didn't want to be seen. I went way in back of the
meadows. I didn't touch the road till I come out nearly
on the main street.”
“Was there a path?”
“A sort of a one."
"You're tellin' the truth about that then, because
that's the tracks from the cranberry bogs. But I guess
you wouldn't tell if you had seen any one, would you?”
Schonbrun's pig-eyes twinkled. "Not unless you
got me arrested an’ I was in a hole. I told you the guy
that done this was a friend of mine. He done some-
thing I never got the back-bone to do."
“Hm. How much would it take to make you tell?
The truth, that is. Not just another fairy story."
"A century note,” said Schonbrun promptly.
Asey pulled out his wallet. “Here you be. I'll stick
it in your vest pocket for you."
“Thanks. Well, it was a man I saw edging around
the woods as I was comin' back the second time.”
“Kind of a man? What'd he look like?”


190 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"He was about as tall as I am. Dark an' very
tanned. I noticed that. I slid down behind some
bushes an' I don't think he saw me. I didn't take such
a look at his face, but he had on good clothes. You
could tell that. An' he wore one of them blue caps
close to the head. What d'you call 'em?"
“Berries,” explained Asey.
"He had one of 'em on. An' he had a sort of green
shirt, I noticed that, an' his suit was gray flannel or
gray something."
"I wonder," I said, "if it could have been Kurth?”
"I hope to goodness it is. Everything's sounded
like him since we started in this mornin'. I declare
to goodness I think every tall dark man in New Eng-
land was makin' a call on Sanborn yesterday afternoon.
Well, could you tell him if you saw him again?”
"Perhaps. But probably not unless he had on the
same outfit I wouldn't.”
"Now," said Asey cajolingly, "tell us how you got
that pin."
"It's like I told you the last time. A woman picked
me up comin' out of Provincetown this afternoon. It
must just have slipped into my pocket. Her name
wasn't what I told you. I don't know her name. But
the initials on the car were an M an' a W. I noticed
that as I got in. She told me she'd been down looking
the place over.”
"Didn't she say anything about this here murder?"
"Not a thing. Honest. She was a lousy driver-


MR. ABE SCHONBRUN
191
was
we didn't talk much of any; why she even nicked a
couple of fenders goin' through the main street here,
she was so punk.”
I knew that Maida Waring had rarely taken her car
out of the garage that she didn't do some injury to it.
It was a marvel among her friends that she herself
had escaped injury.
“An' you don't know if your brother liked sardines?”
Schonbrun shook his head.
"An' you didn't see any sardine tin when you was
there at the cabin, either time?”
As he started to reply, Dot Cram, dressed in pajamas
and dressing-gown, came down-stairs.
She took one look at Schonbrun, he stared at her,
and for the second time in twenty-four hours, she
fainted.
Emma and Betsey took charge of her and led her back
to her room.
“Well," I remarked to Asey, "I wonder what that
means?”
Asey wondered too.
"Mr. Schonbrun," I asked,“have you ever seen that
girl before?"
He shook his head. "No, I never did. An' I found
out it don't pay to tell you two sleuths anything but
what's true. But I'll tell you something more I re-
membered. I thought I saw some one in a white dress
in the woods when I came up to the cabin the second
time. It wasn't till after I saw that man. But I


192 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
might of been mistaken. It might of been clothes on
a line or something. I ain't real sure of it.”
"You saw the man after you found your brother
dead," I reflected, “and you think you saw some one
before you found him?"
"The first's right, but I'm not so sure of the other.”
“What made you think of it now?” I wondered if
he had seen Dot and if that had recalled it to his mind.
"I don't know. I just did.”
"I wisht," Asey sighed, "that we could be sure of
anything you say."
"Listen, brother. Everything I told you lately is
true. You two are a little too good for me. But, say,
did that girl know my brother?”
"She was engaged to marry him.”
"I asked because she might of thought I was him
or something. But she oughtn't to be flopping. She
ought to be thankin' God she's well out of a bad bargain.
He'd probably pull a fake marriage an' then ditch her.”
"What makes you think so?”.
"Because, lady, like I been tryin' to tell you, that
guy never did a straight thing in his life. He got
a girl I know of into trouble before he left home. He
wouldn't stick to one woman if some one chained him
to her, he wouldn't. She was his cousin, too. The
daughter of one of ma's sisters. She jumped into the
river after he left. Sounds like something you read
about in the papers, don't it, or like a movie? Yeah.
But the difference is that it's true.”


MR. ABE SCHONBRUN
193
Asey and I were silent. It occurred to me that
possibly it was instinct and not his patent-leather hair
that had made Bill Porter suspicious of Sanborn. I
had almost forgotten about Bill and I said as much.
"Bill's got to learn to take care of himself,” Asey
replied. “I'll run around by the station on my way
home an' see that Joe Bump stays there just to make
sure there's no funny business to-night. He sleeps in
the fields all summer, an' he won't mind parkin' on
a camp stool till Monday mornin'. I don't reckon Bill'll
do much sleepin', but it sure ought to teach him a
lesson, all this.”
“Where do I bunk?” Schonbrùn asked.
“You come home long o'me an’ sleep in your fetters,
feller. I hope a good night's sleep'll refresh your
mem'ry about sardine tins an'a lot o' other things, too.
That's something we got to look forward to to-morrer,
Miss Prue, findin' out about that tin an' about Kurth
an' his wife. I reckon Schonbrun an' me'll be gettin'
along."
"But how can you drive?” I protested. “And
oughtn't some one to look after your head?”
"It'll be all right. I forgot to say I guess the doctor
kind of recognized that petticoat."
“What?”
"Yup. I'm kind of 'fraid your 'scutcheon is goin'
to suffer a blot or two from this day's goin's-on.”
“Well,” I said resignedly, "no one talks about es-
cutcheons till there's a blot on them anyway. I shall


194 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
hold Bill responsible for any damage done to my repu-
tation.”
"You could sue him," Asey grinned.
“But what do you think about this business, Asey?"
“Who do I think done this murder? Well, Dot went
over there an' gave Sanborn back his ring, 'cordin to
all 'counts. Then this feller here went there twice.
Then there was Bill. Far's I can see, first they was
the brother, then Bill, then Dot an' then the brother
again. Then there's the stranger that might of been
Kurth, an' the white skirt that might of been almost
any one. An' Schonbrun says the brother was alive
when he left- "
"He was,” Schonbrun interrupted.
“An' Bill says he was alive an' he left him that way.
We don't know about Dot, an' I ain't so sure about
your second visit, Mr. Schonbrun, though I don't think
you got the spirit to do it. But the strange feller
might o' done it, an' maybe not. I don't know. That
one-syl’ble' maid might of done it 'f she'd had wings
like an angel, an' so might Betsey an' so might you if I
didn't think you two was too much Cape Codders by
blood to do anything of the kind. An' so might Mrs.
Manton, if she'd weighed anything less'n a million
pounds. An' then there's the lady of the sparkly pin.
I s'pose you know," he spoke to Schonbrun, "that the
woman that picked you up an' gave you a lift is the
wife of the gent most likely you saw meanderin' around
the cabin?”


MR. ABE SCHÖNBRUN
195
“She is? Say, listen, brother. Then I can tell you
something more. I guess I got a little fresh with her
or something, for she looks at me an' laughs when I
kidded her an' says nothin' doin', that she's got a per-
fectly good husband of her own, an' she don't play
with strange men. I says why ain't he on the job then,
an' she sort of smiles an' says she's right on her way to
see he does now. I asks her if it's golf or another
woman, an' she says it was another man an' another
woman both.” He stopped and lighted a cigarette.
"Damn your weed,” said Asey with the first show
of irritation he had made all day. "Get on."
“So I asks her if he's run away or she's run away,
and she says no, they'd been divorced. An' she says
she's down on the Cape huntin' him because he's found
out the truth about the other man, an' she's afraid he'll
do something crazy. Say,” said Schonbrun excitedly,
"it was Dave who was the man? Do you think so?”
"I haven't a doubt of it now, if what you say is
true, have you, Asey?"
“Is it the truth, feller?”
"Gospel,” said Schonbrun.
"Well,” Asey grinned,"I guess that's that, an' I guess
the rest will keep till mornin'. Mister, I hope your limbs
is as stiff to-morrer as my head is sore right now.
Give us your other hand. I'm goin' to tie you up all
nice an' safe.”
Schonbrun submitted cheerfully. "I guess I got it
comin' to me, all right.”


29 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
I assisted them to the car. "Good night,” I said,
land ior mercy's sake, do be careful of your head, Asey.
And please, Mr. Schonbrun, see that he doesn't go
rampaging around any more to-night.”
They drove of down the lane. Wearily I sat down
in the ning-room and thought. I was reminded of
Bulls stock and somewhat vulgar expression. "No
marter bow thin you slice it, it's still bologna.” That
sentence expressed my thoughts admirably. No matter
how carefully I mulled over our list of suspects, they
were, so to speak, still bologna.
Betsey came down-stairs. “We've finally got Dot
to sleep and Emma says she's retiring before anything
else turns up. Snoodles, I'm getting surer by the
minute that Dot must have done this. Although the
brother is sort of in the limelight, isn't he?”
"As far as I can make out,” I told her, "with this
feeble and sleepy and thoroughly useless brain of
mine, Asey is right; practically any one at all might
have done it. I'm that confused, Betsey, that I'm
not sure but what you and I did it together. If I
think one more thought about Dale Sanborn, who would
seem to be where he very rightly belongs, I shall be
seized with fits, like a cat. And that reminds me. Has
Ginger been fed and looked after to-day, or hasn't
he? It's the first time in years that I've neglected
him."
"Come on to bed,” said Betsey comfortingly. “Gin-
ger's in his basket in your room. I'll make you a hot


MR. ABE SCHONBRUN
197
toddy and run you a tub and you'll feel like a new
woman when you've finished with them.”
Ordinarily I do dislike being coddled, but somehow
it was restful being coddled that night. I sank down
into bed and wondered how many gray hairs I'd added
to my scalp during the day.
In the middle of the night Ginger woke me by pranc-
ing on my stomach. I tried to quiet him, but he re-
fused to be quieted. Now many people insist that a
cat is dull in comparison with a dog, but as I always re-
mark to the intense annoyance of all of my dog-loving
friends, Ginger is a remarkable cat. I do not claim
that he is psychic, but it was he who discovered the
burglar last winter in our home in Boston and roused
me by licking my face so I was able to telephone the
police in time to keep the Whitsby pearls in the family.
I turned on my flash-light and looked at him, tail
five times normal size, all the hairs on his back standing
on end. It occurred to me that his prancing this time
might not be without reason. I snapped out my light,
closed my eyes tightly and listened. Distinctly I heard
some one move in the living-room. I pulled on my ki-
mono, picked up the torch and crept down-stairs.
At the foot of the staircase I bumped into some one.
I turned on the light. It was Dot.
“What is the matter?” I demanded.
“I'm sorry to disturb you, Miss Prudence. I craved
Betsey was sleeping so peacefully that
I hadn't the heart to disturb her."


198 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Bed is the place for you,” I said severely.
“I know it is. Miss Prudence, I'm sorry for the
way I've acted, all this silly fainting, I mean. But
when I came down-stairs to-night and saw that man, I
thought it was Dale."
"You've never seen the brother before?”
"I never knew he existed.” She gave a little sigh.
“But he is built like Dale, and oh, I don't know. I've
been pretty shot all day, I guess. I'll try to be more
sensible to-morrow.”
We went up-stairs together. At my door she leaned
over unexpectedly and kissed me.
"Please believe in me, Miss Prudence. I didn't
kill him. Please believe in me.”
I patted her shoulder and told her to run along to
bed, that to-morrow everything would be cleared up.
In my room Ginger blinked at me. His hair was still
fluffed up on end. I pulled off my kimono and told
him to get into his basket. "It wasn't a burglar," I said,
"and everything's all right. You're a nice cat, but
to-night you let your enthusiasm run away with you."
He looked at me, blinked again, and walked with
studied carelessness to his basket. The insolent flick
of his tail and the proud curl of his whiskers said as
plainly as words, “All right, if you say so, I'll obey.
But you're wrong."
And his very assurance about it put me into one of
those nervous states where, in our house that never
squeaked, I heard noises and footsteps till dawn.


200 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“Then?” Asey prompted.
“Then I skirted the top of the hill and went around
to the cabin and in the back door. You see, when Dale
acted the way he did on the porch Friday, I decided
that things had better come to an end. I had my
engagement ring on a chain around my neck and I
made up my mind to give it back to him.”
"Did you?” Asey reached for a popover.
“Yes."
“An' what happened? What did he say?"
"He, well, he was perfectly horrid. He took it and
laughed and said that he was glad I was coming to
my senses. He said he never had any intention of mar-
rying me anyway, and, well, he said a lot of nasty,
untruthful things about me.”
"Didn't I tell you he was like that?” Schonbrun in-
terrupted. “You were lucky to get out of it, miss.”
Dot shuddered. “After hearing him talk yesterday,
I am beginning to think I am, though I never thought
so before. He made me perfectly furious. I don't
think I've ever been madder in my life. I was so
angry I couldn't talk. I just ran out of the cabin and
tore back as fast as I could.”
"How long were you over there?"
“Not long. Only a few minutes. I ran both ways.
I stopped on the porch after I got back to catch my
breath, then I went out into the kitchen with Miss
Prue. That was at— "
Asey consulted the time schedule. "That was at


202 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
left the cabin seven or eight minutes before to get here
then. And Schonbrun says he heard the clock strike
five some time before he came back to the cabin.”
Dot looked at me gratefully.
“That's right.” Asey considered. “She must of left
a minute or so before five anyways, even a couple of
minutes earlier, maybe, if she's tellin' us the truth. An
you say it was—how much longer after five you seen
this flash of white, Abe?"
"Must of been six or seven minutes after. Maybe
eight."
“Um." Asey pondered.
“But,” I asked, “have you and Mr. Schonbrun signed
enough of a peace treaty for you to be sure that he's
telling the truth now?"
"We been all over everything,” Asey returned, "him
an’ me have, an' I guess like he said the last version
of his stories is true. I sure paid him enough to have
it as straight as an encyclopediay. Dot, is your last
story right, too?”
"Yes, Asey. I've told you the truth. The only
reason I didn't yesterday was that it sounded so sort
of awfully thin. You two were so set on finding out
who did it that I felt sure you'd land on me. It never
occurred to me that you would doubt my story about
going down to the tennis courts, but I didn't figure
on Asey's shooting my story to pieces so beautifully
with the confounded fishing boat. Has any one found
the ring?"


204 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
a cane. No, I kind o' feel symp'thetic like about who-
ever done this,-Abe told me a lot more about that
brother of his last night,-but I reckon we got to keep
right on tryin' to find out who did it."
"I thought you couldn't convict any one on circum-
stantial evidence,” Emma remarked.
“Well, that's the way the law goes. Law says a child
with jam all over its face an' the jam pot empty an'
indigestion next day ain't guilty of stealin' jam if no
one didn't see him do it. Might of been the dog that
ate the jam an' then the kid played with the dog an' got
the jam all over itself that way. An' maybe the
stomach-ache was on account of something else alto-
gether. But when it's a case of murder in the courts,
with the newspapers all riled up an' what they call public
opinion gettin' itself all pink in the face, that's another
brand of cat altogether. You start a newspaper razzin'
a district 'torney an' he'd claim George Washin'ton
stole cherries an' started a cannery. Nope, I don't
guess we can leave much to chance in this attall."
“But he was alive when I left him," Dot said, "and
when I saw him, for that matter. Wouldn't that let
Bill out?"
"It might an' it might not. It would let him out only
to get you put in his place. You see, far's I can make
out, when there's a crime done some one has to get
punished. That's just one of them idees people have
got since they was civ’lized. Eye for an eye an' all
that. But the law don't really care much who gets pun-


ASEY TRACES THE SARDINES 205
ished 'cordin' to my way of thinkin'. If they get the
right one, well an' good. If they get the wrong one,
the one who done the crime is the only one that knows
an' he or she ain't goin' to stick their nose into any
noose. But whether it's the right one or the wrong one,
the effect is just the same. The papers is satisfied an'
the people is satisfied an' the police gets promoted an'
we all think it's a grand an' glorious country. So there
you are. It'd be worse for you than it is for Bill,
because as Abe says, if worse comes to worse, why,
Bill he's got the money to spend to get himself off. I
shouldn't wonder if he couldn't ordinarily, but like I
say, he's too rich to get off without trouble.”
"You haven't much of an idea of justice,” I re-
marked. “Or else you emphasize money too much."
"Not attall, Miss Prue. If a poor man c'mits a crime,
he gets his, 'cause he ain't got money enough to get
off by hirin' smart lawyers. If a rich man gets mixed
up in a crime, he's got the money to get himself off,
but the people are against him because he's got money
Far's I can see, all crimes ought t be done by what
the papers call the moneyed middle class.”
"That's all very well,” I said, "but I can't see that
it's getting us anywhere. And although I don't like
to say this, we haven't any more proof that Dot is
telling the truth than we have that Schonbrun is. No
more do we know who the strange man who was prowl-
ing about the cabin was, nor do we know about the
woman in white, if there was a woman in white. I


206 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
can't see that we're making any headway at all.”
"We got two more people anyways to get worked up
about," Asey reflected. “What I want to know is
about that sardine tin. We got to do something about
that right now.”
“Just what are you intending to do about it?" Emma
asked.
Before he could answer, Olga interrupted. "Boy to
see Mr. Bill's Asey.”
“Who is he?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "Town boy."
“Show him in," I said.
She brought in a freckle-faced lad whom Asey greeted
pleasantly. “'Lo, Little Lon.” He explained to the
rest of us, "This here's Lonzo Bangs' boy. They call
him that though it ain't your name, is it?”
The boy shook his head and grinned. "Nossir. It's
Ebenezer Philemon Bangs, but they call me Little Lon.”
I mentally reflected that they would have to.
“What can we do for you?” Asey asked.
"Nawthin' much. Pa wanted me to say as how he'd
got the dory all right yest’day aft'noon, an' he wants
to know will you give him a diff'rent anchor. He
don't like the one's on it now. Too light, he says."
“Good godfreys mighty," Asey sighed. "If he wants
another anchor, let him take another anchor. He can
have the one in the tender to Bill's motor-boat. They's
just alike, but he can have it. You tell him not to go
thinkin' up anything else though.”


ASEY TRACES THE SARDINES 207
“All right.” Little Lon made no effort to move.
“Anything else on your mind?”.
“Uh-huh. Kind of. I was up here to this end o'
town Friday night.”
“Was, was you?"
"Uh-huh. 'Twas about eight o'clock. Featcher pitcher
don't begin till eight-forty-five's a rule an' I drove
up with Hi White."
“What's that got to do with the price o' beans?”
“Nawthin' much." Little Lon was a typical Cape
Codder. No over-statement of facts for him, I re-
flected. “'Cept I saw a light in the cabin there where
Mr. Sanborn lived."
“What?” The six of us spoke like a carefully trained
Greek chorus. “What?"
“Uh-huh. They was a light there. I noticed it
flash on while I was drivin' by, an' by the time I'd
turned back, five minutes or so later, it wa’n't there."
“Why didn't your pa tell us that?"
"He didn't know. I forgot all about it till some one
up-town said he'd been killed before six. I told pa
last night an' he said to tell you to-day." He turned
to go.
"Wait up a bit. Was there any cars goin' along the
beach or parked there round the lane then?”
“Uh-huh. Lots of spooners.”
"Notice a Packard tourin'?"
“You mean," said Little Lon delightedly, "that one
you was askin' pa about? That Brown's that you got


208 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
parked out back? Naw. I didn't notice it. Say, is he
in this?”
“Don't know. That all you can tell us?”
"Guess so." He grinned and replaced his visored
cap which proclaimed Nutter's varnish to be the only
one worthy of any one's consideration, and left.
"Oh, m' God!” said Asey. “Oh, m'God! Who was
that an’ what was they doin' there? I declare to good-
ness I never seen a feller as got called on so much, dead
or alive, as this Sanborn.”
"I know," I said soothingly. “But what about the
sardine tin? You were saying something about it when
you were interrupted by the son of Bangs.”
“Yup. Betsey, what was there in that rumble seat
of Lucinda's when you all come back from the store?
What groceries, I mean?"
Betsey frowned. “There were a couple of dozen ears
of corn, and a bucket of clams, and a bag of potatoes,
and a dozen bottles of ginger ale and all the rest of
the things we got at the store. I'll get you the bill if
you're really interested."
"No need. How many other bags was there?”
"Two or three, anyway."
"An' Bill got all his own things, didn't he? I noticed
they was all loose.”
"He waited on himself.”
“An' he put the things in the seat, or did you?”
"He did.”
"Well, now, I guess I can explain how that tin got


ASEY TRACES THE SARDINES 209
where it got,” Asey announced. “Y’see, Lucinda's got
a sort of cavity in her back; it ain't a real rumble seat
like in the new roadsters attall. An' it was full of
groceries, see?"
"No," I told him.
"Well, that there cavity slopes. It's real deep near
the center an' the middle of the car, but up along to-
ward the back where the spare tire is, it ain't more'n
a foot. An' Bill's a lazy piece. Probably he just stuck
everything in the back where the cover goes down.
It's a real heavy cover an' it's a job to lift it. It goes
all the way down to the cover rack where the spare
tire and the trunk is. It don't stop a couple of feet away
like in cars to-day, see?"
I nodded.
“Then with all those things piled up, it wouldn't
fit, the cover wouldn't. An' so when Bill hit a jounce,
if the sardines was on top, as they probably was, they'd
fall out. Lucinda's springs ain't nothin' to brag about.
Them sardines wasn't in a bag, 'cause when I pulled our
things out they was all sort of strewn around. Now,
question is, where'd they jounce out? Would there be
one place more likely than another?”
“Yes," said Betsey eagerly, "there would. You
wouldn't notice it in that pullman car you've been roll-
ing around in, but I know from driving the bug. It's
the far side of the tennis courts, where the water that
runs down-hill washes out a hollow by the side of the
road.”


210 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"By the side?” Asey repeated.
“Yes. Just as we were coming to it on Friday morn-
ing we passed a rubberneck bus that crowded us way
over. It was when I bit my tongue, do you remember,
Dot?"
"And you dug your elbow into me. Yes, I remem-
ber.”
"That was probably when it fell out. I don't know
why I didn't have the wit to think of it before. It
just never occurred to me, I suppose."
"Look here," I said excitedly, "was that tin opened
by a key or by a can opener, does any one remember?"
"By a can opener. I remember because it caught
my eye and I thought at the time that no one ever
could open a sardine tin with the key that went with
it. I'm positive it was chopped open by a can opener,”
Emma said.
“Then,” I said triumphantly, "let's go and see if
the key is still there."
"You an' me will go," Asey announced. “The rest
of you can stay here an' meditate.”
Before any of them could protest, we were on our
way.
"I wanted a chance to talk to you real bad,” Asey
said, "an' I ain't had a chance since last evenin'. But
I'll tell you somethin'. If Bill thought Sanborn
was oily, I'd like to know what he'd think of the
brother.”
“Do you suspect him?"


ASEY TRACES THE SARDINES 211
"I don't know's I suspect much of any one a lot, but
that Schonbrun! Say, him an Ananias is just like
that.” Asey held up two fingers. “You know how that
tin got from where ever it landed to the cabin, don't
you?”
"How?"
"Old Honest Abe Schonbrun took it, that's how."
“How do you know?”
“Because last night before I went into Rider's hut,
I peeked into the window to see that there wasn't any-
thing funny waitin' for me. Rider was openin' a can
of sardines, or maybe they was herrin'. He bu'sted
the key.” Asey stopped the car. “Come on, let's get out
an' pretend to hunt. Rider cussed an' Schonbrun
laughed an' pulled a key from his pocket. Rider
didn't use it, though. He acted just the way every one
else does, like Mrs. Manton said. He went an' got
a can opener. I noticed it.”
He crawled around energetically on his hands and
knees.
“Kind of hate to get my Sunday trousers all dirty,
but we got to give a good show. The others is probably
watchin'. Anyhows, Schonbrun he put the key back in
his vest pocket an' last night when him an' me was
playin' in our little fight, I felt in his pocket and got
the key. I looked at it later. It's one just like those
on Bill's cans. It's near two inches longer than the
av'rage key, an' it's got two slits, not one.”
I picked up a stick and scratched industriously


214 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Got to hand it to you. Now I guess as soon's
you find the guy that took them sardines from the
road there, or whoever ate 'em an' left the tin there,
you'll get the guy that done it."
But a deathly pallor came over his face as Asey
looked at him and said gently, "Why didn't you say,
so before, Abe?"


CHAPTER XIV
KURTH FINDS HIS CAR
“Say what before?” Schonbrun asked belligerently.
“What you talkin' about?”
“Why didn't you tell us before that this sardine tin
was so all-fired important?”
“Whyn't I tell you? Ain't you been belly-achin'
about it ever since I seen you?”
"Maybe we did wonder about it, but none of us said
as how the person who found it did the killing. That
was all your own idea. An' what I want to know is,
why didn't you say something about it before?”
"I knew you was tryin' to get me mixed up,” said
Schonbrun angrily. "Here I do everything I can to
help you, an' Jeese, you even tie me up an'— ".
"An',” Asey interrupted, "with the aid of a few
of Uncle Sam's strips of cur'ency with C's in the cor-
ner of 'em, we ask you a few questions."
"Didn't I deserve 'em? Huh? Didn't you come an'
take me away by force when I wasn't doin' anything
but mindin' my business like a good citizen?".
"Don't let's go into all that again. We been
over it so many times already that I've c'mitted it to
mem'ry. Will you tell me why you think the feller that
took them sardines is the one that done the murder?”
215


KURTH FINDS HIS CAR
217
I resented Asey's use of the plural pronoun. All
this complication was his own fault, and I knew from
the beginning that no good would ever come of it. And
here he was, blithely including all of us in his little
joke.
"Joke, huh?” The officer eyed him truculently.
“It ain't going to be so funny to explain to the captain.
He doesn't like jokes like this. And I suppose you
think it was a joke to have us take this man's car
and leave him stranded miles from everywhere. Yeah.
You folks has a nice sense of humor. Go on.”
“That's right,” Asey went on ruefully. “It sounds
kind of punk now, but this is the way it was. We saw
Mr. Kurth drivin' around in his car up-town an'he
didn't notice us attall. Now," he looked at Betsey and
flicked an eyelid.
"You see,” Betsey drew a long breath. I thanked
heaven that the girl had an imagination. I myself
should not have known how to continue. "You see,
Mr. Kurth had wanted to come and visit us this week-
end, but unfortunately we had asked other guests. And
so of course when we saw him and he didn't notice us,
we thought he was angry or something." She smiled at
the officer. “So we thought it would be sort of amusing
to say that his car was stolen and have him arrested.”
The policeman looked at her scornfully. "Yeah?”
Emma put down her knitting. "Surely, Lieuten-
ant”-he was obviously not a lieutenant but he looked
at her with more respect than he had shown any of us


KURTH FINDS HIS CAR 219
kind and forgiving to us for our horrid practical joke,
aren't you, John?”.
He looked blankly at us all. “I'm sorry I made
such a fuss if this is true," he said lamely. “Only
usually when you find your car gone, apparently dis-
solved into thin air, you don't deduce the fact that some
one wants to see you badly enough to make the police
bring you to them.”
He smiled and added another bill to the donation of
Asey's. "It's all right, officer. Perfectly all right.
You don't need to make any charges, or even to report
this if you don't want to.”
"Will you ever forgive us, Johnny?" Betsey asked
as the policeman left. "It was a scrimy thing to do,
but it seemed awfully funny at the time. Really it did.”
"Don't give it another thought,” he assured us. “The
only thing that hurt was that I was out visiting Terry
Carpenter, and he lives miles out on some sand-bar.
You know where it is, don't you? Peaked Hill, they
call it. And after plowing through acres of sand to
come back and find my car gone and me miles from
everywhere, was depressing, to say the least. But I got
a lift back to Provincetown and sent the alarm in.”
He laughed. “That's a new one. Think of the possi-
bilities of reporting peoples' cars as stolen!”
“Why didn't you come to see us if you were here
on the Cape?” I asked.
"I knew you'd have a house full of company and I
didn't think it would be the thing after angling for


KURTH FINDS HIS CAR 221
"You haven't been down this way for some time,”
I remarked.
"No, I've been out in China till very recently. Been
doing newspaper work there. But tell me about this
Sanborn case. Bill Porter didn't do it, did he?”
"We don't think so," I said, “but it's a curious
affair all around.”
"How was he killed? The papers weren't very ex-
plicit about the weapon."
"We don't know what killed him other than that it
was a blunt instrument. The local sheriff clings to the
idea that the weapon was a hammer wielded by Bill,
one that Dale Sanborn borrowed from us. That is, he
thinks it was the handle of a hammer. But no one
knows for sure.”
"Hasn't any attempt been made to find out?"
“The sheriff is so sure of Bill and the hammer that
he hasn't tried to work along any other lines at all.”
"But aren't there any foot-prints or finger-prints or
things like that?"
“Foot-prints wouldn't leave any trace in the soft sand
around the cabin.” I wondered if it were my imagina-
tion or whether Kurth had given a sigh of relief. “And
finger-prints," I went on, "are too advanced for this
particular corner of the world.”
"No clues of any sort?”
“There are clues enough, but they're not such mam-
moth aids. The principal mystery at the moment is
the sardine tin that belonged to Bill which was found


KURTH FINDS HIS CAR 223
Asey came to the rescue. “We've been tryin' to get
Bill Porter off, an' Abe's been helpin'. He saw a man
behind the cabin Friday an' thinks you was him."
“I'm sorry. That is, I'm sorry to disappoint your
discoveries in this amateur detecting stunt, but I really
was not the man. Do I look like the sort of person
who'd wear a green shirt and a beret?”
In his white flannels, brown coat, white shirt and
brown tie he resembled a collar advertisement more
than anything else.
"I don't know what sort of a man you are," Schon-
brun said stoutly, “but whether you wore green shirts
or not, you had one on Friday afternoon.”
Asey looked at him. "Maybe you're mistaken, Abe.
Perhaps it was just some one who looked like Mr.
Kurth. Forget about it.”
Tardily I recalled Asey's instructions to follow his
lead. "Yes,” I said, "perhaps you'd best say no more
about it."
Schonbrun looked from me to Asey and back again.
“Oh, very well. O.K. by me. Can't seem to please you
two at all. Give you some information an' you get
worked all up over it an' ten minutes later you want
me to forget about it. O.K. by me. I will."
"Have you seen anything of — ” I was trying to be
tactful and at the same time ask him about Maida, but
it was proving difficult.
"Of Maida?” He was very unconcerned. "No, I
haven't. I believe she's in Paris.”


224 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“We're having more callers,” Emma said pointedly.
I looked toward the doorway, where Doctor Reynolds
stood waiting expectantly.
“Good morning. Possibly you didn't hear me. How's
the head, Asey? Miss Prue, how did that sea-horse get
bunged up last night?”
"Head's all better,” said Asey. "I told you how I
hurt myself. Fell off a roof.”
“You didn't tell me anything of the sort,” he ex-
postulated.
It occurred to me that very soon I should have to
introduce Schonbrun and Kurth and I wondered how I
could do it without having the doctor demand all the
information we had about the two of them.
Asey solved the problem. “This here is Mr. Abe,
Doc, an' this is Mr. Kurth."
"Of course, Mr. Kurth.” The doctor shook hands.
"I have a very clear recollection of that grand slam
you made when you were down here last. You bid it,
if you remember, and made it doubled and redoubled.
I had forgotten your face, Mr. Kurth, but not your
achievement or your name. That reminds me, Miss
Whitsby, did you ask Mr. Kurth about that note?”
“As a matter of fact he's been here only a few min-
utes and I've barely had time to say how-do-you-do.”
The doctor was surveying Schonbrun. "I didn't
catch the name," he said.
Schonbrun looked at him resentfully but made no
answer.


KURTH FINDS HIS CAR
225
“Abe," said Asey hastily. "Abe. He used to have
another name, but he changed it. Just Abe. Great
admirer of Lincoln, he is.”
"Indeed.” The doctor peered at Schonbrun. “Yes,
yes. Of course. Somehow he reminds me of some one
I have seen, though of course I have a wretched memory
for faces."
"It is hard to remember everything, isn't it?” Emma
asked sweetly. She accented the "everything" ever so
slightly.
“Quite so," said the doctor. “But I don't suppose
you'd object if I were to ask Mr. Kurth a question or
two? I'm connected with this case, after all.”
“Go right ahead,” Asey told him. "İf Mr. Kurth
don't have no objections."
"Well, Mr. Kurth," the doctor began, “in my ex-
amination of Mr. Sanborn I found a note signed by you
and although I brought it over here and showed it to
Miss Whitsby, to ask her opinion on it, she said she
was sure it had nothing to do with the case. For that
matter, she said you were not in this country at all.”
Kurth flashed a look at Asey and me. "I'm be-
ginning to understand a lot of things,” he said know-
ingly. “Miss Whitsby knew nothing of my where-
abouts, Doctor. She was telling you the truth. Have
you the note with you?”
The doctor passed it over, and Kurth read it through
thoughtfully. "Yes, I remember that. I had just been
telling these people here that I knew Dale Sanborn


226 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
slightly in New York, and at one time I had had a law-
suit brought against him which was later satisfactorily
cleared up, all but one or two points. Sanborn had used
means to obtain information about the affair which I
didn't consider strictly honorable. I found out about it
only a week ago, and this is what the letter refers to.
I'll admit that it seems a bit formidable after what has
happened, but that is all there is to the matter."
"Did you hear from him?” The doctor asked.
"No, I didn't. I thought of course that my letter
had missed him, and you'll find another just like this,
more or less, at his New York apartment. I decided
that my information about his being down here was
wrong. I'd read about it in the paper."
Asey and I looked at each other.
"I came down here,” Kurth continued, “to see Terry
Carpenter. You know him, don't you?”
“The artist who lives on the dunes? I've heard of
him though I don't know him personally.” The doc-
tor's tone implied that nomadic artists who lived on
sand-dunes were scarcely numbered among his ac-
quaintances.
"Well, I was coming down to see Terry, and I thought
it would be a good plan to clear up loose ends with
Sanborn at the same time."
"I see.”
John Kurth's story was perfectly honest and straight-
forward as he told it; that is, it would have been if
Asey and I had not known that he spent Friday night


KURTH FINDS HIS CAR 227
at one of Lonzo Bangs' cottages under an assumed
name and if Schonbrun had not declared him to be the
strange man of the green shirt.
"I see,” the doctor repeated. It was evident that
the doctor would not dream of questioning the word of
a man who had bid and made a grand slam, doubled
and redoubled.
"I'm glad.” Kurth smiled. “That letter is more than
ordinarily ominous. And it would have been unpleasant
for me if it had fallen into the hands of some one who
didn't know me. I can't imagine what I must have been
thinking about.”
"I see,” said the doctor for the third time, "but
what about that letter from your wife?”
"From my wife?” Kurth was genuinely puzzled.
“But I haven't a wife. That is, Maida and I are di-
vorced.”
The doctor looked reprovingly at me. “And you with
all your Lucy Stone talk. You know, Miss Whitsby, I
don't like to be unpleasant, but the more I think of it
the more it seems to me that you must have been de-
ceiving me. In fact, it seems definitely suspicious to
me.”
"Don't be an utter idiot,” I said with dignity.
"I'm sorry if I've hurt your feelings, but really, it
is suspicious when any one has misled me the way you
have. And Asey too.” The doctor thumped his fist
emphatically on the table. I was sure he hurt it. "Now,
Mr. Kurth, you say you and your wife are divorced?”


KURTH FINDS HIS CAR 229
I am not the murderer, and I don't believe Maida is
either.”
“The doc's just mad because he don't know more,”
Asey assured him. “He can't live happy till he knows
all about everything. He's that sort."
Kurth rose. “I'm afraid I shall have to bid you all
good-by. Terry is all worked up about my car, and I
shall have to run over and let him know that everything
has turned out all right. I'll come back and see you
again and I hope you won't have to steal my car to
make me.”
Asey was making little motions with his forefinger.
“But you won't go right now, will you?” I protested,
watching the finger and trying to gleam directions from
it, “won't you have a glass of ginger ale or something
before you go? Betsey will look after it, won't you?”
Kurth hesitated. “That's very kind of you."
But it was Asey who leaped from his seat and got
out to the kitchen before Betsey could move. “I'll get
it,” he said as he left.
It was some time before he came back bearing a tray
and glasses. I noticed that his hands were grimy,
grease-smeared, and that the nail of his right thumb was
torn.
Kurth drained his glass. "Fine. Now I must be
going.”
We all followed him out to where his car stood by
the garage.
In his absence Asey had done more than to open a


232 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“Now, Mr. Kurth, I want to find some things out,
if you don't mind. Seems to me I asked more questions
in the last day'n a half than I ever asked before'n my
life. I'm goin' to 'ply for a job on the deestrict 'tor-
ney's squad after this is all done an' finished with.
Now, you was to see Sanborn, wasn't you?”
“Yes.”
"Time?"
"It was about a quarter or twenty minutes after five
on Friday afternoon."
“You didn't drive up the road here. How'd you
come?"
"I left my car stuck into the little blind lane about
half a mile up the road. I came by foot the rest of the
way and walked up the other side of the hill.”
“Been there before ever?".
"No."
“How did you know so well how to get there, then?”
“Truth is,” said Kurth haltingly, "I drove out along
here earlier in the day. In the morning. I looked over
the lay of the land then. I didn't want to be seen by the
people here, because, well, because I didn't want to be
seen.”
“So you went the back way. See any one?"
"No, I thought I heard some one. Probably it was
your friend here who was so sure he'd seen me. But
those woods crackle underfoot and I didn't think much
of the noise I heard."
“Go on. What'd you find in the cabin?"


ASEY GETS MYSTERIOUS 233
"I looked in the window. Sanborn was lying on the
floor."
"Didn't you go in?”.
"No, I didn't. I've seen dead men before, Asey,
and I knew he was dead. He wasn't in a faint or any-
thing like that. I was in a fix. To begin with, if I
went back and reported it to some one, they'd begin
asking me questions. Then they'd ask Miss Whitsby
about me and learn that I'd asked to come down. There
would be the suspicious fact that when I'd come to see
Sanborn I'd left my car and walked up here. I thought
that a small-town sheriff would scent a plan and
promptly put me in jail.”
"Did a lot of thinkin',” Asey commented.
“One does, in a situation like that. Then I recalled
the note I'd written Sanborn. It was two to one that
that was lying around somewhere and that would be
against me. You know," he reddened, "I read detec-
tive stories and it always seems that the person who
finds the body is immediately suspected. I've told
you that I'd had dealings with Sanborn, and that I had
cause to think that he was not one of the more honorable
men. In fact, de mortuis and all that, but he really
didn't have too savory a reputation.”
"We already deducted that,” Asey said.
“So that my concern was not so much that he had
finally been overtaken by fate as that my own position
would be difficult to explain, that is, with any degree
of lucidity. If I said I was coming to make a business
се


236 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
stay around till we get this matter threshed out. See?"
"I see, I'll stick.”
“Can I depend on that?”
“I give you my word. I'll stay here and if there's
anything I can do to help you get Bill off, I'll do it.”
"Fair enough. Now, Miss Prue, I want you to come
up to town with me. I want to see if we got any more
telegrams. Bein' as how it's Sunday an' Zenas at the
office rings the bell in the Meth'dist church, I don't
know how we're goin' to get 'em, but we'll manage.
Abe, are you goin' to stay put too?”
"Yeah.”
"Well, Mr. Kurth, I'll make you responsible for Abe
anyhow. You see he don't go dashin' off somewheres.
An' Abe, I think it would be just as good if you didn't
do a lot of talkin'. You just sit an' watch. Pretend
you're one of them monkeys as can't see nor hear nor
talk no evil. Get me?”
Schonbrun nodded.
"All right then. Come along, Miss Prue. If that
doctor comes wanderin' around, humor him but don't
tell him nothin'.”
We made our way through the curious-minded group
that still hung about the rope along the beach road.
"Well,” said Asey, "what d'you think?"
“Think? I've stopped thinking. I haven't had a
constructive thought since Friday night."
"You know this Kurth better than I do. Do you
think he's lyin'?"


ASEY GETS MYSTERIOUS 239
I told him about Ginger. "He seemed to think that
there was more to it than just Dot. I had the hardest
time trying to get him quiet. But I think he was just
hearing things. Perhaps it was some reporters or some-
thing prowling around.”
“You mean he kept on actin' funny even after you
an' Dot came up-stairs?”
“Yes. But you don't think it was anything else,
do you?”
"Don't know. I'll go in an' call Hyannis an’ see
what we got.”
He came back. "Jimmy's wired me a thousand dol-
lars f'r expenses, an' I hear from that feller in Boston
that Kurth an' Maida had a suit for libel brought
against Sanborn an' it was two months ago. Now,
what do you think about their bein' together in this?
I don't like to shake your opinions none, but p'raps Mr.
Kurth an' his wife is together in this thing after all.
But the suit got quashed. An' the feller in New York
says only what we know about Schonbrun bein' an
agitator of sorts. He got run out of the city. When
was it Kurth said he come back from China?”
"He didn't say exactly. Just that he'd come back
very lately, or something like that. But the two of
them, and a libel suit. That's strange.”
"Sure is. I guess maybe the ole doc was right.
Maybe they was more to them notes than we thought.
Do you mind takin' a little drive?”
“Of course not, but what for?”


240 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"I want to think,” said Asey plaintively, "an' I think
better when I'm movin'."
For perhaps two hours we roamed over back roads
and small woody lanes. His forehead was puckered.
If he had worn other clothes and nose glasses I would
have felt that he was a bank president pondering on a
billion-dollar loan.
"You know," he said finally, "I think they's more
to what Dot told us. I'm kind of sure that there's more
in this Kurth an' his wife business than we know
about, an' I'm sure Schonbrun's holdin' out on them
sardines. But I don't think any of 'em did it, nor I
don't think Bill did either.”
"You exasperate me," I said. “Why?”
"Most folks, Miss Prue, is like other folks. I don't
mean that they're all alike in everything, because they
ain't. But from all the people I seen one place an'
another, it seems to me that every one's got some little
trick or other that's the same as some one else. Don't
some of your friends remind you of other people?”
"I suppose they do," I admitted. “But what does
that lead to?"
"I been thinkin' about the people as is connected
with this. I been tryin' to remember who they was
like an' what the quirks the other people they was like
had. You take Dot. She might of been mad enough
to strike Sanborn. I wouldn't think much of her if she
hadn't. But she'd of slapped him in the face. She
ain't the kind who'd killed him careful like he was


ASEY GETS MYSTERIOUS 241
killed. 'Cordin' to Slough, the doc said that most off-
hand murders was done by a blunt instrument. That's
all right. But he said it was like a rabbit punch, too.
Most women don't know nothin' about rabbit punches.
If Dot had swung them binoculars at him, she'd of
caught him in the face with 'em. She wouldn't have hit
him when he wasn't lookin'. Bill might of socked him
on the jaw, but he wouldn't of used the handle of a
measly old hammer. Nor jiu-jitsu neither. Them two
ain't that kind of person. Now Kurth would of shot
him. They was a gun in that suitcase, but it was loaded
an' a box of cartridges beside it was full too, an' the
gun hadn't been used in a dog's age.”
“But couldn't he have used it as a blunt instrument?”
"He could of. An' that's something I didn't think of.
But just the samey, he'd of used the gun the way God
meant for guns to be used. An' the brother would
of used a knife. He carries one, I found out. That was
what cut me up last night, not that stick he used. I
got the knife away from him, but I didn't have the
strength to do any more than throw it far's I could.
He's just like that feller I said he was like. But
Sanborn wasn't killed by a knife, an' I honestly don't
think, Miss Prue, that he's got the innerds to kill, that
Abe. He fought me more because he was skeared than
because he wanted to hurt me. He's too frightened of
cops to do a thing that would get him stuck into jail
for good. No, I don't think any of 'em done it.”
"Then who did?"


ASEY GETS MYSTERIOUS 243
leave some traces of it. That's the trouble here, Miss
Prue, not so much that we're dealin' with common peo-
ple. You can't find no traces of any plan attall. If any
one had thought it out beforehand, most likely they'd
of done it at night anyway, so that by the time that it
got found out, he or she could of been num'rous miles
away. You know, the Cape ain't the best place in the
world to do murder. If you try to get away by sea,
you got to know an awful lot about the coast; if you
go by land, they's only two directions you can go. If
you go to Provincetown, you're bottled up. They's
nowhere left to go. An' unless some one got away
quick, they'd get caught comin' up the Cape, like tryin'
to crawl out the neck of the bottle.”
"I thought of that on Friday night," I said.
"So I don't think much of this was planned before-
hand. An' if that's the case, the person who done it
is still around, because most likely it's some one who
can't get away now without askin' for trouble.”
"But who?"
"Only other people connected with this as far as we
know are you an' Betsey an' Mrs. Manton an' Olga.
Olga an' Betsey is all alibied.”
"Possibly," I said with some frigidity, "you think
that she and I did it together.”
“I didn't say any such thing. Only you an' her
has only got say-so alibis, though I got to admit I be-
lieve both of you. Well, we'll get along home. Maybe
we can dig up the rest of the stories from these folks.


ASEY GETS MYSTERIOUS 247
ing to listen. I hoped that no one would take advantage
of his monologue to wind a watch as is usually the case
when one strains one's ears to hear something. Putting
on an interested face and looking as though I were tak-
ing in every syllable, I listened as I had never listened
before for Olga's footsteps.
She was back in my room.
What in the world had Asey sent her for, and what
was she hunting in my room? Whom in the household
did he suspect? And why had he not told me?


MAIDA PAYS A CALL
249
There's not much of a crowd and I don't think any one
would bother us. May we?”
"You might as well. Or do you think, Asey, that
some of those roving reporters might pounce on them?"
“They might's well. If they collect a mob they can
always run back home. Sure, go along."
Betsey went to the hook where the bath-house key
was kept. "We'll have to take turns getting ready.
I say, Snoodles, where's the key?”
“Just where you left it.”
“But it isn't. And it was here this morning, be-
cause I noticed it not an hour ago."
“Maybe it's fallen off the hook,” Emma suggested.
Betsey knelt down and searched the floor. "It
hasn't. Now what do you suppose can have happened
to it? This is silly. Did any one pick it up the way
Bill picked up the hammer?”
“I'm sure I don't know. Has any one seen it?"
No one had.
“This is absurd,” said Betsey crossly. "Now, how
can we go swimming at all? All the suits are in the
bath-house."
"Break in,” Dot offered.
“You simply can not do any such thing," I said
sternly. “The last time we had to break in I told the
carpenter to arrange it so that we couldn't break in
again. This is the fourth key that's been lost this
summer, and I'm sick and tired of paying bills for re-
pairs to that lock. You can wait till to-morrow and


MAIDA PAYS A CALL
251
it for granted. Probably it wasn't there attall.”
"Look here, Asey,” I was indignant, "you have some
idea and you're keeping it from me. Why? And what
is it?"
Asey looked as though an ice cube wouldn't melt in
his mouth. "Miss Prue, you've got so used to suspect-
in' people that you just can't get yourself out of the
habit.”
"Your innocence doesn't fool me one bit. I should
say that it was you who were used to suspecting people
and I'm afraid you're suspecting me.”
"Honest injun," he said aggrievedly, "it ain't that
attall. Now what I want to know is, what about that
there libel suit? Don't that seem kind o' funny to
you?"
"If you won't tell, I suppose it couldn't be dragged
from you by wild horses. I don't know any more
about Kurth and his old libel suit than you do. As a
rule," I added acidly, "people have a good and suf-
ficient reason for the things they do."
"Yup. They do. Hey, here's the old doc again.”
Reynolds came up the steps wearing a triumphant
smile on his face. "I hope,” he said complacently, "that
I'm not interrupting you two ferrets, but I have a little
something I should like to tell you.”
He sat down, lighted a cigar and crossed his long
legs.
"Fire away,” said Asey in a tired tone.
"I intend to. I have just called up a friend of mine


256 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"I should think you would. But haven't you been
bothered to death by reporters and people?”.
“The doctor has kept off the newspapermen, and the
rope has kept off the rest. You know Asey Mayo?”
She smiled at him. "No, but I've heard of him from
Jimmy. Tell me, what have you done to get Bill out
of this?”
"Lots of things,” Asey replied. "Did you pick up
a man on the Provincetown road yesterday an' give him
a lift to Wellfleet?”
She seemed surprised. “You mean in the afternoon?
Yes. How did you know?"
"Ever seen him before?”
“Not that I remember. Why do you ask?”
"It's been a sort of habit with me lately. I can't
get myself out of it. Please don't think I'm rude or
anything, but are you sure you never seen him?”
“I'm sure, though I remember thinking he reminded
me of some one. I don't remember who, though.”
“Could it have been Dale Sanborn?”
Maida rose from her chair. “What do you mean?"
“Don't get excited, now. If he didn't that's all right.
Have you found the little pin you lost, the one with your
initials on it yet?”
Maida looked from Asey to me and back again. "I
don't understand you. Have you second sight or some-
thing like that?"
Asey pulled the trinket from his pocket and passed
it to her.


MAIDA PAYS A CALL
257
“Where did you find it? How did you know it was
mine?”
I explained that Asey and I had been doing some
detecting on our own account.
She fastened the pin on her dress. “I still don't
understand.”
"Do you mind if I ask you more?” Asey wanted to
know.
"Not if you've found anything else that belongs to
me. I lost an adorable beaded bag a week ago and
nothing would please me more than to have you drag
that out of your pocket in a rabbit's mouth or wrapped
in an American flag."
«'Fraid it isn't anything as pleasant as all that. Tell
me what you were doing about or in Sanborn's cabin
on Friday night.”
· Her toe tapped against the floor. “But I wasn't
there.”
“But we know you was, Mrs. Kurth.”
"Please don't call me that."
“All right. Miss Waring, then. You were there,
weren't you?”
"I certainly was not."
"Well, where were you?”
"I was staying with friends in Hyannis.” She turned
to me. "You know the Cutlers, don't you?”
“Yes,” I said. “But they left last week for Cali-
fornia. I'm sorry, Maida, but they did.”
She was silent.


258
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Hadn't you better tell us right now, Miss Waring?"
Asey suggested. “It's goin' to be kind of unpleasant
like if you don't. Now, you was at the cabin Friday
night?”
“Yes, I went there."
“And you found Sanborn?”
“Yes. He was dead.”
"And what did you do?"
“I had a flash-light. I looked at him, saw he was
dead and left."
“Humpf. What'd you go to see him about?”
“On business.”
“Miss Waring,” said Asey listlessly, “will you stop
lyin'? Miss Prue an' I have been over this business since
yesterday mornin'. We know a lot. We know about
your letter. Don't try to hedge like the rest. I used to
think that the human race told the truth once in a while
anyways, but I'm changin' my mind. This ain't just
ord’nary lyin'. This is gettin' to be plag'rism. Now,
you tell us why you went there an' what you wanted to
see him for.”
"It was all a matter of business,” said Maida firmly.
Asey sat up very straight in his chair. “I am get-
tin' tired of people that think I'm dull b'cause I don't
use big words. I'm tireder of havin' people tell me fish
stories. I'm tireder yet of havin' to drag things out
of people. In fact, I'm gettin' downright plum honest-
to-goodness mad. It's been comin' on for a long time.
There ain't nothin' like havin' patience. I was always


MAIDA PAYS A CALL
259
taught t'admire Job. But twenty Jobs an' sixty Grisel-
das wouldn't be able to stand this. Miss Waring, I'm
givin' you one more chance. You tell me why your
husband an' you started that libel suit against Sanborn.
Tell me why you went to see him. Tell me why you
didn't let people know he was dead. Tell me why you
put that blanket over him. An' hurry.”
I looked at Asey. His lips were pressed tightly to-
gether. His eyes blazed. For the first time since I
had known him he seemed thoroughly angry. His pose
of nonchalant indifference had melted away like a snow-
storm in April. Maida looked at him and decided to
answer.
"I didn't tell because I lost my head when I saw him
lying there. I was utterly frightened to death. I
touched him and every bit of common sense just went
from me. I put the blanket over him because I felt I
ought to do something, and it didn't seem right just
to leave him lying there. That's the truth."
“I hope it is. It's funny to me that all the people
who saw him an' knew he was dead just edged away into
space again. How'd they know he was killed? He
might of had heart failure or a dozen different things,
yet every one was skeared to tell. It ain't like he'd been
shot or stabbed.”
“Any one who knew Dale Sanborn," Maida blazed
out, "would know in an instant he didn't just die. He
wasn't the sort of man who just dies. They say some
people were born to be hanged. Dale Sanborn was


260 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
born to be murdered. No one who knew him would
stay around if they found him dead; no one would ever
tell of it. Because every one who knew him had a
good reason for killing him.”
“We know that,” said Asey abruptly. “Why did
you seem surprised when Mrs. Howe told you that there
was a sardine tin next to him? Didn't you see it?"
"No. I went all to pieces when I found him. I
didn't notice the tin at all. I didn't know about it till
she told me."
"You haven't told us yet why you went to see him.”
She repeated that she had gone there on business.
“Please tell us your real purpose," I urged. "We
have reason to think that if you do it will clear Bill
and get him out of that wretched box-car. Won't you?”
"It was business.”
"Well,” said Asey decisively, "if you won't tell us
there's only one way left for me. Here comes the rest.
That's fine. We'll do the whole matter up brown right
now. Hurry up, you. I want to talk to you."
Kurth gave one look at Maida. “What are you
doing here?” He rushed to her and took her in his
arms.
"Just like a movie,” said Asey. "A bad third-rate
movie. Mr. Kurth, will you wait up a minute? I've
got something I want to say.”
Kurth paid no attention to him. "You found out
too? How did you find out? Were you coming to see
him?” he murmured.


MAIDA PAYS A CALL
261
“Will you listen to me?” Asey spoke in a quarter-
deck voice.
He waited till John and Maida turned to him. "Now,
if all of you is listenin', I've got something to say. I'm
tired of fussin' around an' bein' credulous an' kind an'
nice. If I had my way I'd belt the truth out of you
with a piece of hose. You listen to me, Kurth, an' you
too, Miss Waring, an' Schonbrun, an' all of you. I'm
goin' to march you up to the sheriff this instant. I'm
goin' to tell him everything I know an' a lot I suspect.
Shut up!” This to Schonbrun who started to remon-
strate. "Keep quiet! All of you three is keepin' some-
thing back, even if what you told me is true, which
I ain't so sure of. I'm goin' to give you ten seconds
to make up your minds. Kurth, are you an' your wife
going to tell me about this lawsuit, an' those notes, an'
how well you knew Sanborn an’ what you had against
him an' what you come to see him for? Or are you
goin' to tell it to the judge to-morrer mornin'? Well?"
Kurth looked at Maida. She nodded. “Yes.”
“Glad you got a little sense. Now, Schonbrun, what
about you? You comin' clean about the sardines or
not? Yes or no?”.
“You said "
"I know I did. But it's an old custom to change your
mind an' break your promise when folks don't hold
to their part of a bargain. I said I wouldn't get you
into no trouble 's long 's you told me everything. You
ain't. What about it?”


262 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“O. K.,” said Schonbrun sulkily.
"Fine. Get seated, every one. Get set.” Asey
pulled a jack-knife out of his pocket and pulled out
the long gleaming blade. Carefully he balanced it on
his knee. “May not seem much of a weapon, but I can
slice a pin head with that at a right good distance. I
could hit any one that gets in a hurry to beat it a
whole lot easier. Get goin', Kurth. Break down.
Spill the beans. Come clean. What's all this about?”


CHAPTER XVII
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
“WHERE shall I begin?” Kurth asked quietly.
“Where do you usually begin? Begin at the beginnin'
for a change. It's about time for some one to begin
there instead of the end. If I'd wanted you to begin
at the end, I'd of said so. Where'd you meet up with
Sanborn first?"
"I met him about four or five years ago in New
York. I was working for the Rayman Publishing House
at the time. He had some ideas about a new novel that
he wanted us to handle. I brought him home for din-
ner. That was where Maida met him first. We both
liked him. He was amusing, witty, interesting and a
good talker. We developed a friendship with him.
Maida had a friend, Alice Harding, and the four of us
ran around together a lot.”
"Alice Harding?" Dot interrupted. “I used to know
her. Didn't she kill herself or something?"
“Yes.” Kurth's tone was bitter. "I'll tell you all
about that later. We were all very intimate. You
know how it is when four people are together a great
deal. Well, the long and short of it is—do you re-
member the book Sanborn wrote that was called the
greatest exposé of married life in America?”
.
263


THE CAPE COD JYSTERY
It was the book I had tried to read and given up,
as I had toid B1. About the girl who loved a man
who is married to a woman who loved a man who
cared for the first gid?" I asked.
-Ye. That's the one. If you think it out you can
see how it applied to the four of us, Alice, myself,
Maida and Sanborn.
I gasped. “Do you mean ?"
"Euctly. That was the way Sanborn repaid our
friendship. We read the book when it came out, ex-
pecting it to be the one he had told us about, the life
of an opera singer. But we found the story of the four
of us. It was the reason for our divorce.”
“But I never dreamed of such a thing," Betsey said.
"You didn't know we were the characters? Prob-
ably you wouldn't. Sanborn stuck very much to the
truth, but the whole thing was colored and touched up
and distorted so that the whole affair was ugly and
sordid. Alice read it and came over to see us about it.
We called Sanborn in and asked him to explain."
"Did he?” Asey asked.
"He laughed at us as though we were so many puppets
on a string. He admitted that he had taken us for his
characters. He thought he had been exceedingly clever."
“Did every one know it was you?”
"No one knew for sure. There were a good many
whispers, though. You know how it is in New York. You
have different groups of friends but most of them don't
know that the others exist. And the book wasn't ex-


GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS 265
actly the type that friends would care to connect you
with, to your face, at least. But we knew. The hellish
part of it was that I didn't know how much of it was
true, about Maida and Sanborn, of course. Nor could
she tell about Alice and myself. As a debunking of mar-
ried life it certainly dug deeper into the muck than any
other forty books you could name. But can't you see
how it was? We didn't know how much was true and
how much was Sanborn's imagination. We couldn't
tell how much of us people recognized. There is always
a certain amount of petty deception between two people,
but we couldn't tell from what he'd written how much
each of us had been deceiving the other. Things went
from bad to worse. I let Maida divorce me, though we
did the thing as quietly as we could and neither San-
born nor Alice was mentioned. We couldn't bring him
in without dragging her through the mire, and we didn't
want to do that. We were in an uncomfortable posi-
tion. If we sued him or made any fuss about the book
we would be overwhelmed by the publicity, and at the
time it simply would have meant that I'd have lost my
job and all the chances of getting another one."
“So you went an' divorced yourselves without gettin'
at the root of things?” Asey asked disgustedly.
"You can't imagine how terrible it was, Asey," Maida
told him. "You see, it was true that I'd been indiscreet
with Sanborn, though not nearly to such an extent as
he portrayed it in the book. It was really a very mild
flirtation. I couldn't make Johnny see it and of course


266 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
I had been a little jealous of Alice. None of the three
of us really trusted the other at all. It just got more and
more involved all the time.”
“What about the other girl?”.
“We thought, and so did she, that Sanborn really
cared for her," Kurth answered. "I think she played
about with me more to pique him than anything else.
But after the book episode, he left her absolutely alone.
Didn't go near her or write her or anything. One night
as she was waiting outside a theater for a cab with an-
other man, he casually asked her if she'd seen Sanborn
lately. She was abnormally sensitive about the affair.
We all had been upset over it, but she had taken it
even harder than we, I think. She made some answer,
turned away from him, then slid and fell in front of a
taxi that was drawing up to the curb. The police called
it an accident but we knew better. The man she was
with was certain it was done on purpose, too. The girl
she lived with told Maida that the night before she'd
come home unexpectedly early and found Alice all
but unconscious. She'd shut herself in the kitchenette
and turned on the gas."
Schonbrun nodded his head vigorously. “That
makes two girls, his mother an' two others I know of
that's got Dave to thank for gettin' themselves killed,
one way an' another. An' a divorce. They was prob-
ably more, too. I told you so.”
"What's that got to do with this here libel suit?”
“Coming back from China,” Kurth answered, "I met
ice.


268 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“What'd you use another name for?”
"Because I didn't think any one would recognize
me and I scarcely wanted any one to know how anxious
I was to get at Sanborn. After all, it was a ten-to-one
chance that I'd never see the Whitsbys. I didn't know
that he'd moved up next door to them. I had every
intention of getting a written statement from him and
then beating him within an inch of his life. Then I
was going to find Maida and get things settled again.
You can imagine how I felt when I saw him lying
there."
"What about you?” Asey turned to Maida. "How
do you come into this at this point?”
"I'd always felt that John and I had acted like two
idiots to have gone and separated like that without
finding out about things. But at the time I was as
wrathful as he was. Last week I landed in Boston and
saw Sanborn's name in the paper as staying down here;
and I thought I would come down and see him and
try to find out about things. I don't know why I
was reading the Cape news so assiduously except that
we had a lot of friends down here and I had been out
of touch with them so long. I telegraphed Miss Pru-
dence thinking that the hot weather would be a good
excuse to ask to come down. Then I met a man I knew
in Boston who said he'd seen Johnny and that he was
coming down to see some one here. It was Carl Thorn-
dike, John, and he said that you must have some deep-
seated reason for coming because you'd refused to go


272
THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
money an' Dave used to bring home sardines when we
didn't have anything else to eat. He hated sardines,
always, because he got sick from eatin' too many of
'em when he was a kid. I guess workin' over 'em all
day didn't help him to like 'em any better. Once
when ma wasn't workin' an' they'd laid off hands at the
factory we lived on 'em for a whole week. I got tired
from eatin' them myself. But Dave, he used to get
just like these people said, whenever he saw them. An'
there wasn't nothing else for him to eat, that time.
Soon after he went back to the factory again he got
fired and got another job. It wasn't much later he
beat it for good.”
“But why- "Asey persisted.
"I'm comin' to that. Friday I found the tin at the
foot of the hill. I was kind of hungry so I put it in
my pocket an' when I got to the cabin an' Dave wasn't
there I sat down an' ate 'em. I bu'sted the end an'
couldn't use a key so I found a can opener an' used
that. If that cop had been any good he'd have noticed
that an' looked at the opener. Only I pulled a fast
one, see? I wiped it off, handle an' all, when I got
through with it. I'd just thought about Dave an' the
sardines then, that's why I did it. An' just as I was
finishin' I heard him comin', so I tossed the tin way
under the table so's he wouldn't notice it, see? That's
all there was to that. But you know I said that there
was others that would kill that guy in a minute?
Well, one day Dave made a mistake at the factory, just


GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS 273
after he went back that time I told you about when he
was laid off, an' he put something in some oil or some-
thing that he shouldn't an' some people got poisoned.
The boss found out who done it an' that was why he
got fired, see? An' one of the men who worked at the
factory with him had swiped some of the bad tins
an' his two kids took sick after eatin' them. One died.
He swore he'd get Dave an' he nearly did. A week
before Dave left home he got hold of him an' beat him
up plenty. That's why when I went back the second
time an' found him dead I thought I wouldn't say
anything about the tin if I got pulled into this, which
I thought I wouldn't. I didn't know as the Porter
guy was mixed up in it, an' I thought the tin would
confuse people. An' it would lead people off the track
if detectives got on the job an' started things. See?"
"You ain't so dumb as I thought,” Asey informed
him. “I get what you're aimin’at. You thought they'd
go on the track of the sardines an' find out about the
guy that threatened him or one of 'em out of that there
sardine episode?”
"Sure, why not? I knew it wasn't. An' how was I
to know that even this bum sheriff could track 'em
down? I thought when you got me that you suspected
me, so I didn't tell you. I wanted you to get off the
track on the things too. That's mostly why I didn't
tell you. The rest was that they were blamin' Porter
an' why should I stick my feet into any puddle?”
"Is that all, Abe? It ain't any too convincin'."


276 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
process was it that brought you to this clever con-
clusion?”
“It's not so absurd as you may think,” the doctor
replied tartly. “Tell them, Sullivan."
"That's right,” said Asey contemptuously. "Pass
the buck. Let George do it.”
"All right,” said Sullivan heavily. “Well, the doc
here was sure that there was more to this than I thought
at first. So we moseyed around and found out a lot.
I got hold of Ramon Barradio an' he told me some-
thing that looks important."
“That's the way to get inf'mation,” said Asey ad-
miringly. “How many times he been in jail? Six or
eight, Slough? An' didn't you never read in the Bible
about lookin' a gift hoss in the mouth? Or the Porty-
gees offerin' information? Huh?"
Sullivan glared at him. "You're real funny, ain't
you? Well, Ramon told me about something that
happened up to Pete's dance hall on Wednesday night.
Seems like Miss Betsey here an' Sanborn, they was up
there an' they had a little difficulty.”
“You didn't tell me " I began.
But Betsey, white as a sheet, interrupted me.
"I know I didn't tell you we were there. Let him
go on, Snoodles. If he's got to."
"Well, Miss Whitsby, your niece an’ Sanborn had
a little altercation. Ramon said he didn't know how it
all started, but he happened to hear what went on."
“Funny how things happen like that,” Asey mur-
and
longer


GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS 277
mured softly. "Real funny. All the in'cent bystanders
ain't got killed off in Chicago, I cal'late.”
“Will you keep your gab quiet, Asey Mayo? Any-
way, Miss Whitsby, Ramon heard your niece say, 'If
Bill Porter or my aunt heard you say any such thing,
they'd kill you on the spot.' And then Sanborn laughed
and said why didn't she tell if she was such a fool as
to do it. And then Miss Betsey said she'd like to kill
him herself.”
“What was it all about, Betsey?” I pleaded.
"He was annoying me, that was all.” Her voice was
toneless. “I did hope we could get through this without
unearthing all the combined scandal of the family and
our friends."
“Anyway," Sullivan continued, “Sanborn says why
didn't she tell them and see what happens? He said
he bet that nothing would because other people had
offered to kill him but nothing ever came of it. What
do you think of that?” He concluded triumphantly.
“Not much,” said Asey. “What's the good of all
that if Betsey didn't tell Miss Prue or Bill about it?
I can't see it.”
"How do you know she didn't? Answer me that?
How do you know?”
"He doesn't know," I retorted. “But he's perfectly
right about it. I didn't know and I'm sure Bill Porter
didn't. And will you please tell me in the name of all
that's sensible how you can arrest me for being an
accomplice of Bill?"


278 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"I got that all figured out. You say you was out
in the kitchen all that time. What was to keep you
from standin' around an' seein' that no one interfered
when Bill come an' done the murder? Or maybe you
even held his attention while Bill killed him. No one
can prove that you was where you said you was all that
time.”
“Not only that,” the doctor continued, "but hadn't
you sent Betsey up to town to get her out of the way?”
“Sure,” said Asey. With great deliberation he re-
lieved himself of an outworn quid of tobacco and cut
himself another. "Sure. An' she left Mrs. Manton
an' Dot around to see what was goin' on, an' they did
it in broad daylight, just so's no one else would know.
You two are real deep thinkers, that's what you are.
That two small brains could carry all you know is a
growin' wonder, as the feller said.”
"I don't care what you say!” Sullivan shook his
fist in Asey's face. “Captain Kinney of the old second
precinct- "
"To hell with Captain Kinney of his ole second do-
funny!” Asey roared. "An' keep your dirty hands
where they belong. If you had the brains of an ox,
Slough Sullivan, you'd know your boy friend the doc-
tor was mixed up in this more than Miss Prue here
ever was.”
“Whaaat?” Sullivan looked startled.
"Sure. What do you think he's so int'rested in
gettin' the murderer all done up in nice steel brace-
ce


280 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"I'll do just that,” said Sullivan delightedly. "I'll
put him in the box-car longside of Bill.”
"Ain't you goin' to let Bill go free?"
"Nun-no.” Sullivan shook his head. "I might as
well take the both of them. I want to make sure before
I let Bill go."
"Look here," protested the doctor hotly, "you can't
do a thing like that. What motive would I have for
killing a man I'd never even met? This is fantastic.
I'll have you prosecuted.”
"I don't care. I don't care about motives either,"
said Sullivan cheerily. “If I got two people who might
of done it, it's all the better for me to-morrow mornin'.
Bill's got plenty of motives and you got plenty of sus-
picion tacked on to you. Come along. I'll take you
right along now.”
“But," the doctor began.
“But nothin'. Come along. It won't do you no
harm to sit an' think for a while. You do enough
talkin' as a rule. Now you can get yourself talked
about. Say, did any of you see him up this way?"
"I saw him comin' yonder along the beach road at
four-thirty on Friday," Asey informed him. "I've
thought of it plenty before. He parked his car at the
bend in the road and got out an' come in this direction.
I was watchin' through the glasses. But you got
enough to go on, Slough. You don't need no more."
“Guess I have, at that.”
“When you goin' to start up to court to-morrer?"


GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS 281
“At eight. That'll give me time enough."
"Fair enough.”
They left, with Sullivan's great ham-like paw firmly
gripping the doctor's shoulder.
“Asey Mayo," I demanded, "did he really do it?"
“Not a chance in the world,” that gentleman re-
torted comfortably. “Only he had a hankerin' to 'rest
some one an' it might as well been the doc as you."
He warbled a bar from the Floradora sextette.
“An' why not him?" He paraphrased. "An' why
not him?"


CHAPTER XVIII
THE FUTILE SUMMING UP
"HAVE you," I demanded, "had "
"Had that poor in'cent doc all incarc'rated for
nothin'? Yup. I have. Wouldn't you rather it was
him sittin' wastin' away in a box-car 'stead of you?”
“Of course," I said with entire sincerity.
“Well, he was the only one I could think of off-
hand like who could take your place. I might of
suggested Abe here or Mr. Kurth, but I kind of thought
it would do the doc good. Teach him a lesson. It
won't hurt him none and like as not he'll get himself off
before he ever gets to court. But I didn't think the
Whitsby name ought to get smudged none an' Slough's
kind of an easy soul to make believe things."
Kurth wiped the tears of laughter from his cheeks.
“And I believe he said you couldn't make a monkey out
of him. Asey, I wouldn't have missed this for years
of my life. But if I were you and I ever felt sick, I
shouldn't go to Reynolds with my aches and pains.”
"I know," said Asey feelingly, "it's goin' to be real
unhandy when I get sciaticky to go trottin' all over crea-
tion for another salve 'plier but I cal’late I'll have to."
"What about us, Asey? What do you want us to do
now? Shall we stay here?”
282


284 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
Asey smiled. "Well, I'm goin' home to go to bed."
“But aren't you going to do anything more?”
“Miss Prue, I spent Friday night out in a mahog'ny
boat in the bay an' I ran around till past midnight
yesterday. An' I didn't get much sleep last night, what
with lookin' after Schonbrun an' this bunged-up head
of mine. I'm goin' to get a little sleep before I do one
more thing. Like the feller in the poem, 'I'm weary an'
overwrought with too much toil an' too much care dis-
traught.' Yup, I'm goin' to go to bed.”
“But Asey!”
"Can't help it none. I ain't no six-day bicycle racer.
I got to sleep once in a while.”
I followed him out to the roadster. "What are you
going to do about the bath house and your mystery
there?”
"Oh, yes. Well, I got to go there, an' you better
cajole your people inside somewheres where they won't
see me till I got what I'm after. Ain't no sense in
givin' everything away now.”
"I think you're inconsiderate and heartless," I said,
"to go off in this manner. We haven't got anywhere
and you were so sure you'd find out everything by
to-morrow. And what are you after at the bath house?"
“Forget all about it, Miss Prue. I said I'd get this
fixed up by to-morrer, an' to-morrer ain't here yet.
Sufficient unto the day is the deed thereof. You put
everything right out of your mind an' go get some
sleep too. Your eyes is got as many hollers around


286 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
It'll be conversational material for months to come.”
“Don't talk about it,” said Betsey. "It's hard
enough for me to try to play this hand with you two
anyway, without your bringing up this awful business.”
"I'm sorry.” Emma gathered in the trick that set
Betsey down. "But it's really rather blotting other
subjects out, you know.”
“Down three.” Betsey tossed her hand on to the
table. "Hereafter you play in silence.”
Emma's run of luck continued, and she and I all but
whitewashed the two girls. At ten o'clock Betsey an-
nounced that she had had enough.
"You confirmed gamblers are impossible. You use
rules that were discarded before I was born and you
never do the same thing twice running. I can't under-
stand it.”
"Don't try to," said Emma consolingly. "Your aunt
and I have played together too long to have your new-
fangled rules and regulations upset the even tenor of our
way in the least. We'll waive your losses if you'll
get us some food.”
“Come along," said Dot. “If we don't I'll have
to foot it back to New York, absolutely on my two
feet.”
We went out on the porch to wait for them.
“Tell me," Emma asked, "this is more serious for
Bill than we have thought, isn't it?"
"Asey seems to think so," I answered. “I suppose
it is. Have you seen the papers? They're calling Bill


THE FUTILE SUMMING UP 287
a millionaire roisterer and demanding action. It's real-
ly remarkable how the American people love to drag
a rich man through the courts and I think they revel
particularly when he's indicted for murder. They've
brought out all the details of Jimmy's yacht and that
party he and Bill gave to the English manufacturers
two years ago, and all about their uncle Phineas' di-
vorces and everything else. I'm waiting with bated
breath for them to start in on Betsey and me. I can't
see how we've managed to escape so far unless it's be-
cause Cousin John Whitsby is putting his veto on the
subject.”
"If Bill is taken up to-morrow he'll be put in jail,
won't he?"
“Yes. I hope Jimmy has attended to lawyers as
Asey told him. This is rather a mess, Emma.”
“Grim. Very grim. Were you ever in jail, Pru-
dence?"
“Certainly not,” I said in a horrified tone.
"I didn't mean it that way. Were you ever in one?
That is, did you ever go through one?”
"Once when I was a child with my father. I don't
remember much about it except that I cried and it was
smelly. Why?"
"I went through one once with Henry Edward. It
was grim, Prudence, very grim indeed. Bars and
bare concrete and an odor of carbolic acid and disin-
fectant and too much humanity in one place. I don't
wonder that there are prison riots."


THE FUTILE SUMMING UP 289
I don't suppose that there's any use in running on
about it.”
Dot and Betsey came back with a heaped-up tray.
We left it an unsightly mess of paper napkins and
empty plates in no time at all.
"I'm going to bed,” Emma announced. "If we are
to have the final analysis at six to-morrow, I think
it's high time we all got some sleep.”
Betsey agreed and the two of them went up-stairs.
Dot announced that she wasn't the least bit sleepy.
“Besides,” she added, "I can't see that a few hours
one way or another will make much difference when
one has to get up at that ungodly hour. I shall be
half-asleep anyhow and it won't make me any less
yawny if I go to bed now or at five-thirty."
She lighted a cigarette. "Miss Prudence, what do
you think that man has up his sleeve?”
"Asey? I haven't the faintest notion. You know,
Dot, this thing isn't going the way it ought to go.
We've followed up everything that can be followed and
it's been just so much time wasted. The more that is
explained, the less involved people become. Just the
same, I can't imagine why that man has gone home to
bed at this crucial moment. Either he knows a lot
more than he has condescended to tell me, or else he's
putting up a tremendous bluff.”
"It is peculiar. You don't think, do you, that he's
going to land on me?"
“My dear child!"


290 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
“I know, but you've got to admit that if any one
really is in deep, it's me. After all, I was the last
person to see him alive."
"You couldn't have been,” I told her. "If that was
the case you'd be the murderer. You say you left him
alive and Schonbrun says he was dead when he came
back the second time. I'll admit it doesn't look any
too good for you, but there must have been some one
who came after you and before the brother."
“Asey seems so sure that the brother didn't do it.”.
“I know he does. Though I feel he's scarcely the
person whose word I should take about anything."
"This business of Betsey," Dot said. "I meaa
Betsey and Sanborn and the man who overheard them.
That's going to get you all mixed up in this. That
doctor is going to make trouble for you. It may have
been a frightfully brainy notion of Asey's to trick
Sullivan into arresting him, but it's not going to help
you any. When that dull sheriff comes to his senses and
realizes what an ass he's been, I'm afraid he's going
to land on you and Bets."
"I've been thinking of that. Ramon Barradio is
not what you might call a trustworthy person and I
don't think that his word would stand in court, but
the fact is there. Dot, I give you my word that I
am so confused that I feel you or Betsey or I might
have done this in an absent-minded moment. I'm be-
ginning to see why John and Maida got divorced over
a matter like that book. In an affair like this you


THE FUTILE SUMMING UP 291
lose all sense of values. You don't want to suspect
the ones you know and like, but after everything else
has failed, you come back and wonder."
"I know. I found myself feeling you were the
guilty one this afternoon when the doctor and Sulli-
van were powwowing. I knew you weren't, but I just
did.”
“The more I think of it,” I said, “the more it seems
that Schonbrun was right. His brother ought to have
been done away with long ago. I wonder if it wouldn't
be best to let Bill take the consequences and see if he
couldn't get off all right.”
“It would if the doctor hadn't got this fixed idea
about you. Think if I'd ever married that man and
then found out about all this. I suppose I was an
utter idiot not to have known that there was something
wrong somewhere but you really don't expect to find
such men around.”
"Particularly when they wear such elegant clothes.
I know what you mean."
Emma clumped down the stairs. "Are you still
worrying about this business? Your chum Mr. Mayo,
Prudence, has promised to get the guilty one, and I
should think that was enough for you. I have some
letters to go. Where can I put 'em?”.
“On the desk," I told her. “There's a collection
there already. And I do wish you'd stop twitting
me about Asey Mayo.”
"I'm sorry," she said in a tone that had no sorrow


THE FUTILE SUMMING UP 293
Dot, Betsey, Bill, Schonbrun, all had reasons. Then
there was Maida's friend Alice, the girl who had com-
mitted suicide. Perhaps she had friends or a family
or some one who had found out about her and at-
tempted revenge. There was the man of the sardine
factory. There was the doctor Kurth had told us
about and the other unknown doctor whom he had sug-
gested. All of the motives were varied and none of
them was weak.
I myself was not exempt from the list of suspects.
Olga had an alibi if her friend Inga had not been
primed beforehand, which Asey and I both doubted.
As Dot had insinuated, even Asey himself might have
done it. I recalled his suggestion that Sullivan's billy
might have been used to kill Sanborn.
There was the problem of the weapon. We were not
even certain exactly what blunt instrument had been
used. A blunt instrument: I looked around the room.
A lamp, a smoking stand, a gold club, the footstool, -
there was no end to the blunt instruments in sight.
We didn't know whether a man or a woman had done
the murder. As Asey said, not many of the latter
knew about rabbit punches and jiu-jitsu or the vulner-
ability of the part of the head where Sanborn had been
killed. On the other hand, had Schonbrun seen that
flash of white, and had it been a woman? Or was it, as
Betsey suggested, a man with white trousers?
We had no finger-prints, no foot-prints, no clues
of strands of red hair, like my friend Wyncheon Wood-


296 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
Schonbrun, Maida and Kurth. It seemed clear to me
that the others were exempt. Had one of these whose
alibis had not been proved done it? Was it one from
the second circle, out for revenge, or was it some one
whose existence we had not known of, some one still
farther afield?
Ginger uncurled himself from my lap. He yawned
majestically as though to say that he for one had had
quite enough pondering for a time. I let him jump
down, crumpled my diagram into a ball and tossed it
into the fireplace.
The next time any one was murdered in my vicinity,
I thought sleepily, there was one spinster lady who
was not going to concern herself with amateur detecting.


CHAPTER XIX
ASEY AND THE BLESSED HOPE
THE glaring sunrise woke me early Monday morn-
ing. I could hear the faint chugging of the fisher boats
as they started out to the grounds. Outside the cot-
tage the beach grass was heavy with dew and the
meadows beyond were still thick with mist.
I watched the purples and the oranges of the horizon
change and melt as the sun came creeping up. The
twinkling morning star faded away with the garish
color. The curtain of the window next mine rattled
and Emma's head was thrust out.
"Gorgeous, isn't it?" she remarked. “But a lit-
tle thundery, like Mr. Kipling.”
I agreed that it was. "It's a source of constant
wonder to me," I added, "that Cape Codders can be
quite so bleak with all the glorious sunrises and sun-
sets put on for their special benefit.”
She laughed. “I never thought of that. Maybe
we should start an 'up for sunrise' movement. Ugh.
I'm withdrawing. It's a beautiful sight but the air
is chilly.” She closed the window.
I drew my kimono more closely around my shoulders
and perched precariously on the sill. Out by the
wharf a school of small fish were churning the water
297


ASEY AND THE BLESSED HOPE 299
barroom, shouldn't wonder. I'm real sorry. But this
here compulsory insomnia has been an' got itself into
a habit.”
He set down his cup and looked around the room.
"All of you present an' 'counted for?”.
“All of us. Have you seen Bill?” Betsey asked.
“Yup. I drove around that way this mornin'. Bill
he was fine's silk, but he says he'll be glad to see the
insides of a nice warm jail where he can sit on some-
thin' soft for a change."
“And the doctor?" I asked.
Asey snickered. "He's madder'n hops. Wanted
to get a lawyer but no one'd get one for him. Got
neuritis in both of his arms though; an' he didn't get
much sleep, I cal'late, an' I guess he got kind of
bothered by moskeeters. You know they don't seem
to bother Bill much. I kind of guess the doc ain't
goin' to bear much love to any of us for a long time
to come.”
"I don't like to hurry you,” said Kurth nervously,
"but the fact is, have you found out anything? What's
the verdict?”
"I'll get to that. Keep your shirt on. We got near
two hours before Sullivan an' his desert caravan starts
out. A lot can happen in two hours. Besides, I want
to tell you a story."
"Do you think that this is any time to play Sche-
herezade?" I asked impatiently.
"Play who? I'm goin' to tell you a story. You may


300 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
not want to listen, an' you don't have to if you don't
want to. But I'm goin' to tell it anyways, so you
might as well. It's a simple sort of story an' maybe
you'll get what I'm drivin' at toward the end or even
before. But I'm goin' to give it to you from A to Z
an' you can take it for what it's worth.”
"A parable?” Emma suggested.
“Nothin' so high-toned as all that. It's just simply a
story of something as happened a long time ago. But
if you want to call it a par'ble you got a perfect right
to."
He stretched his long legs out before the fire.
"Here goes. I told Miss Prue the other day that
all folks was a little like other folks in one little thing
or 'nother, an' usually if they was alike in that one
little thing they was like them in other ways too. That's
one of the reasons why I believed them stories of all
you people who had to do with Sanborn over to the
cabin on Friday. But you'll see what I mean.
"When I was a boy about fifteen years old I shipped
as a cook on a schooner called the Blessed Hope out
of Boston for Littleton, New Zealand. That was what
they named her, the Blessed Hope, but I don't think
any ship ever had a less suit'ble name less'n it was
a tradin' schooner out Samoa way called the Ice Maid.
"It wasn't a big boat. Only about ninety ton if
it was that an' there was twelve of us on it. Me, as
cook, an' a crew as had an Irishman we used to call
Paddy, an Englishman,-not a real one but a Limey,–


ASEY AND THE BLESSED HOPE 301
as
an' a dumb Swede. They was three mates. One was a
real nice feller as come from Halifax, one come from
Boston an' the first mate was a man from Cape Cod
name of Lysander Trask. Then there was the Cap'n,
he was a state of Maine man, but there wasn't any
one much more against his native state pro'bition than
him. He was a livin' example for the W. C. T. U. to
use for wantin' people to sign the pledge. The Boston
mate he had his wife an' sister along with him, an'
then at the last minute some one persuaded the Cap'n
to take two passengers, a school teacher from Salem,
Massachusetts, an' his wife. He had a brother that was
sheep-farmin' out in New Zealand an' so they was
goin' out to pay him a visit.
"Well, we crossed the 'quator in about twenty-five
days which wasn't bad goin' for a schooner the size of
the Blessed Hope. Everything went along nice an'
easy. The mate's wife stuck to her cabin an' read books
an' the sister was sick most of the way, but Mrs.
Binney, that was the school-teacher's wife, she was
a great cook an' so to take up her time she used to
come into the galley an' help me out. It didn't bother
me any an' in fact it helped me considerable as most
of the time I had to do an able seaman's job too. She
was a real capable homey woman, sharp as a whip, an'
real 'complishin'. She made curtains for the Cap'n's
cabin an' darned up all our socks, an' we liked her.
Her husband was all right but kind of weak-jointed an'
more int’rested in lookin' at fishes than anything else.


ASEY AND THE BLESSED HOPE 303
him dead's a door nail, all bashed over the head with
a belayin'-pin. When I say bashed I mean bashed. It
wasn't any gentle tap like Sanborn got. I ran an' got
Lysander, bein' as how he was first mate, an' the two
of us got things straightened out an' then we started
ť investigate.
“The Limey was a yellow sort an' he'd of used his
knife if he'd 'a' done it."
Suddenly I remembered that this had been his com-
ment about Schonbrun.
"An' the Irishman, well, he got into tempers an' he
loved to pick a fight, but he wouldn't go around bashin'
peoples' heads in when he could use his fists. Likewise
the mate from Boston.”
"Bill,” I thought to myself, "and Kurth. They're
out of this.”
"The Swede was a peaceful sort of feller an’ he kept
a pair of white mice. Besides that, he didn't have
no quarrel with the Cap'n. He was the only one who
didn't."
All eyes turned toward the kitchen. We were pay-
ing more attention to Asey than we had previously
favored him with.
“The mate from Halifax might of done it, but he
was down in the hold. I seen him go an' I seen him
come back after I'd found out about it. I didn't do
it myself an' I knew Lysander Trask hadn't.”
Mentally I checked up. He was eliminating him-
self, Betsey and me.


ASEY AND THE BLESSED HOPE 305
hadn't killed the Cap'n an' so just to make an example
of him, they'd been havin' a lot of trouble with crews
about that time, they took him back to the States
an' hung him by the neck till he was dead. I don't
know how or where or why, but that's what happened.”
“But what does all that prove?” Kurth demanded.
“Nothin',” said Asey slowly, “ 'cept that about five
years later I run across Lysander Trask out in Hong
Kong. He had his own boat then an' he'd just come
'round from New York. It seems that Mrs. Binney
had died out in New Zealand but they'd got word in
New York that before she departed this world she con-
fessed to killin' the Cap’n.”
“But how? And why?”
"Well, it seems like we didn't ever really suspect
her, what with her makin' curtains an' darnin' our socks
an'all. An’ she was such a pleasant spoken woman, too.
But once when the Cap'n was drunk he'd hit her hus-
band an' called him names. He wasn't any coward,
that school-teacher, but he was smaller'n the Cap'n
an' couldn't hit back an' he didn't know quite what
to do about it. He couldn't fend for himself, so she
showed him how. Course, it didn't do much good
for by that time Paddy had already been all hanged an'
punished for it, but there you are."
The fear in my heart which had steadily been grow-
ing was now established. Suddenly I knew why Asey
had refused to tell me so little of his plans and deci-
sions of the previous day.


306 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
"Where's that new book of Mr. Sanborn's?” Asey
asked quietly.
I had completely forgotten about the purple-backed
book I had lent Emma on Friday.
“Mrs. Manton has it,” I said.
“Have you got it?” Asey asked.
She smiled at him and shook her head.
“Where is it?"
"In the bath house." Her tone was composed and
even.
"In the bath house?” Betsey repeated wonderingly,
"but it can't be there. You had it up here Friday after-
noon and we haven't been into the place since that
morning.”
“That's where it is,” Emma stated.
“Will you get it for us?” Asey asked slowly.
She looked at him for a long minute, then rose from
the wicker chair.
“Of course I'll get it, Asey."
"Don't be a goose," Betsey said. "I'll take the
bug and run down for it. I left the car out and it's right
by the door.”
"No matter." Emma folded her afghan and care-
fully put it into her knitting bag. “I'll run down my-
self.”
I laid my hand on Betsey's arm as she was about
to remonstrate, and fiercely whispered for her to keep
quiet. Betsey looked at me questioningly and turned
a little white.


308 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
of the bright waves rolling in. Somewhere in the sky
a sea-gull screamed.
A flame shot up from the car and Asey and Kurth
ran for the roadster.


CHAPTER XX
MERE BAGGY-TELL
ACCORDING to the doctor who was hastily removed
from his prison, Emma had died immediately.
"I wonder if she meant to do it?" I asked Asey
when he came back with the news.
He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't guess
we ever will. I'm inclined to think she did, but she
might not have. But perhaps it's better all around.”
"How did you know?” Betsey asked.
“That book. I knew from that telegram from the
feller in New York that it was a libel suit that Kurth
had brought, like I told you. The only reason I
could think of was from his books. You'd said Emma
had been readin' his latest, an' I remembered that. I
kind of thought that if Kurth had got mad at one book,
maybe she had at another.”
“But this business of it's being in the bath house?
How did you know that?”
"You said you heard a noise on Saturday night.
You thought it was Dot, but when you said that cat
of yours was still riled up, I begun to piece the thing
together. Suppose she had read the book an' found
something in it, an' suppose that was the reason why
she killed Dale. She didn't have no chance to get rid
309


310 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
of the book, an' she knew better than to leave it lyin'
around where one of you might see it. This was all
sup'sition, you see. I'd remembered that story I told
you, too. It was gospel truth. I'd been fooled once by
a woman a lot like her, smart an' cheerful an' nice,
an' I begun to suspect her. She was the one movin'
around, I figgered, gettin' rid of that book. All day
Saturday she set here, knittin', but she didn't have
no chance to do nothin' about it. She was only alone
when Dot an' Betsey went to see them folks that had
been playin' tennis. But that wouldn't of done her any
good; Olga was still here an' all them folks was around
the rope. The cottage wasn't no fit place to hide it.
I thought she might of, though, an' that was why I
sent Olga around yesterday afternoon, to see if she
could find it.”
“But how- "
“Wait up. I'm gittin' there. She didn't have no
chance to do anything about it Friday night because
Slough an' all was around. Only Saturday night
when all of you was to bed and asleep. Then she went
out most likely intendin' to throw it in the water. She
was too sensible to think of just lyin' it around. That
purloined letter business ain't so good as a rule. I
don't know's you notice such things, but the tide was
comin' in that night an' so she couldn't do anything
of the sort attall. Probably, she, bein' intel'gent,
thought of that as a possibility an' took the bath-house
key along with her. Where else was there a better place


MERE BAGGY-TELL
311
than to hide it in her bathin' things? So that's what
she done, intendin' to get rid of it when she could, I
shouldn't wonder. It was wrapped in her bathin' suit."
"How were you so sure about the book?"
"It was just the way I thought of it an' it's proved
all right. When Kurth told us all, then I was a lot
surer. She was the only one that had the new book,
she was a lot like Mrs. Binney an' after all, didn't you
notice she didn't deny she'd been there? She just said
wouldn't you all of heard her.”
"But when did she go to the cabin? What was there
in the book? Whom was it about? And how in the
world could she have acted the way she did afterward?”
"I shouldn't wonder if she'd left you a better ex-
planation than I could give. Didn't she leave a note?”
"Those letters she brought down last night," Dot
said excitedly. “Don't you suppose there would be
something in them?”
Betsey ran to the desk. “There's one addressed
to you, Snoodles. Read it!”
I tore it open. Pages and pages in Emma's neat
handwriting fell out.
“Why, it's dated Friday night," I said.
Asey nodded. "I guessed as much.”
I read the letter aloud.
"My dear Prudence:
"By the time you will have read this, I believe
that is the classic way to begin such letters, I will


MERE BAGGY-TELL
313
"How did Sanborn know? Simply because Henry
Edward found him when he was a student at college,
working his way through, and helped him along. I
knew him the minute I set eyes on him down on the
beach to-day though he pretended not to recognize me.
Prudence, my husband and I had nursed that boy
through typhoid. We had paid his bills, given him
clothes and kept him alive. He knew about Rose, had
been there while she was at the house. Henry Edward
and I have long since ceased to expect any gratitude
from the people whom we tried to help. I did not
expect gratitude from David Schonbrun, but neither
did I expect Reverence. I read it through, then skipped
through it again, trying to assure myself that it was
not my husband or myself who were pictured in its
pages. But I couldn't do it. We were the characters,
but so colored with red pencil as to achieve Marlovian
proportions.
"It was possibly four-thirty when I finished that book
the second time. I decided to go and see Schonbrun,
to see if it really was the truth, for I didn't want to
believe it. There were too many people who would
know, and I didn't want the story public in that ver-
sion.
"I went down-stairs as I always do, clumping a
little, and intending to make some explanation to you,
But you weren't there; I heard you moving about in
the kitchen, banging pans. Then as I came out on
the porch, I saw Dot hot-footing it over to the cabin.
I followed closely behind her, waiting outside the cabin
and heard her conversation with Schonbrun. It strength-


314 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
ened my conviction that he was a knave, even a
greater one than I could have imagined. After she left
I went in, still gripping the book.
"He greeted me cheerfully and asked if all the in-
dignant females in the world were paying him visits
that afternoon.
"For answer I held out the book. 'Did you take this
from the story of Rose and my husband?' I asked.
"He laughed. “Why not? It's a part of my debunk-
ing humanity series. The ministry hasn't had a jolt for
a long time.
"I controlled myself as well as I could. “Do you
mean to tell me that this is the way you reward us for
all we did for you?
"He waved his hand airily and said it was a minor
matter. ‘Manton's dead and who cares? Who'll ever
know?'
"I tried to explain that that was just the point. It
was because Henry Edward was dead that I cared about
it. If he were alive and could fight back, that would
be a different matter. The truth could be told. But
even if I could give my version publicly now, no one
would believe me and I would only be ridiculed.
"He looked at me scornfully and said that there was
nothing he could do about it. That after all, he had
to live. 'Is there any reason in the world why your
husband should not prove a source of income to me after
he is dead as well as when he was alive?'
"Suddenly be stopped and looked under the table.
He saw that sardine tin which the sheriff ascribes to
Bill Porter. Paying no attention to me and to my


MERE BAGGY-TELL
315
questions, he bent over and looked at it more closely.
I have never seen a man in such an infuriated mood.
'Who left this here?' He demanded. "Who brought
it?'
“To have my pleas thus disregarded while he fumed
about an empty sardine tin was more than I could
stand. As he leaned over I brought his own book down
on his head with all the force I could muster. He
dropped like a log.
"I knelt beside him and I knew he was dead. I had
heard Henry Edward tell of that blow on the base of
the skull even though I had no intention of using it.
I did not mean to kill Sanborn, but if I had, I was not
afraid nor was I sorry. He needed to be killed. His
conversation with Dot alone bore that out.
"I did not stop to think particularly. I left him
lying there and hastened back to the house. I expected
instant discovery and I was prepared to face the music.
But when you chose to think I was coming down-stairs
when I was actually coming up the porch steps, it
seemed to me that I might as well take a chance and
await discovery before coming forward and giving my-
self up. I stuck the book in my knitting bag and went
out into the kitchen as you called me.
Possibly I should have told you everything then, or
to-night when the sheriff was here. But it is hard to
relinquish your freedom when you have killed some
one who deserved it. I do not think from what I have
seen of your sheriff that he will succeed in convincing
people that Bill Porter was the murderer. That there
would be others involved did not occur to me at the time.


316 THE CAPE COD MYSTERY
I will wait and see what happens and then when the
time is ripe, I shall see what I can do in the way of
cheating the gallows. Once I went through a jail and I
did not like it; I am sure that I could not endure that.
And besides, dear Prudence, life without Henry Edward
is not the life I care to lead. I have nothing now to live
for and life has lost its zest as far as I am concerned.
This world hangs on a very fine thread. Some day
something is bound to make it snap, and a little sooner
or later makes no difference. So if anything should
happen and there should be an accident, please try to
think as kindly of me as you can.
"You will remember, too, that I have told, or will
tell, no lies about this. I may slide over the truth,-
that is only human,-but the whole thing is in black
and white for whoever wants to find it out.
"I have enjoyed my visit, strange though it may seem.
And if you will send my other letter to Norton and
West they will arrange all the details that have to be
arranged.
"I have written this Friday night while everything
is still in confusion but these are the true facts and this
is the whole truth.”
“Then she meant to kill herself,” I said, "meant it
from the very first. And to think of how she acted, as
cheerful and as unmoved as though nothing were go-
ing to happen."
"I know,” said Asey. "I don't think I ever felt
much worse in my life than I did this mornin'. You see,
I went to the bath house an' got that book an' spent


MERE BAGGY-TELL
317
most of last night readin' it. I knew then. I guess
she knew I did, too."
“But how did you know it was Emma and Henry
Edward?"
"I called up Boston long distance last night when I
got half-way through an' got hold of a preacher I used
to know an' he told me. He was one of them who knew
about the girl.”
“There's a post-script you haven't looked at,” Betsey
said, passing me another page.
“This is dated last night,” I said.
"I don't like to add post-scripts, but it is increasingly
apparent that that lean Asey Mayo knows about the
book and about my hiding it in the bath house. After
Maida and John and their story, it's plain as the nose
on your face who did it anyway. And Asey has wit
enough to bring out the truth before they take Bill away.
So, as these moderns say, that is that. In case I should
have forgotten, there is some catnip for Ginger in my
bureau drawer which in the press of excitement I have
neglected to present you with."
I think it was the last sentence which made me break
down and cry. Even the imperturbable Asey blinked
self-consciously.
"I know it's terrible, Miss Prue, but maybe she's
happier an' surely it's better than what would have
happened if she hadn't done it. By gum!” He struck
his thigh. "If I haven't forgotten all about Bill!”


THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE LIBRARY
DATE DUE
8-31-75
SEP 1 4 1982


UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
.
3 9015 05978 8557
MAR 20 1950