"Chief, I've been--"
"You put a make-team on some half-baked writer named Wood."
"Edward Hazlett--"
"Because," he yelled, "the first person you saw when you stuck your
nose outside of Gordon Andrews' apartment was Florence Wood!"
"Well, Chief, you see--"
"You perhaps suspected that she'd just walked through the wall of
that apartment? And naturally you pulled out your hip-pocket crime
laboratory and checked that umbrella tip for bloodstains before you
threw it aside."
"Well, you see--"
"Schnell, would you have been so damned gallant if she'd been an ugly
old hag in a ratty dress carrying a dead halibut wrapped in an old
newspaper?"
"But you see--"
"So you leap into gallant action, and after you've rescued the fair
maiden from her watery grave, you suddenly find it desirable to use a
department automobile to deliver the damsel home."
"But--"
"Schnell, I'll bet that Wood girl wasn't any wetter than you were. And
that's how you put the long arm of coincidence to work?"
* * * * *
It was more than coincidence. Florence Wood had been in that soaking
rain and whipping wind for more than an hour. Any housewife would have
corroborated my statement that only a prolonged soaking can achieve
a truly wet-through-the-seams condition. Oh, Daddy Wood was just the
guy to think of a stunt like saturating the seams and fibers of his
daughter's clothing by agitating the water supersonically at high
amplitude, but, let's face it, that would have beaten hell out of her
soft white skin.
As for the umbrella, the wound could indeed have been made by a
rapierlike thrust. But a comparison between the depth of the wound
and the length of the tip showed that the bottom of the wound could
not have been reached without forcing part of the umbrella itself
into the victim's body. The face of the wound showed no such outsize
penetration, hence the umbrella was not the sought-for weapon.
At this point, Chief Weston's telephone interrupted him and he snatched
it up, bellowed his name, and then listened. Finally he snarled that it
was for me and fairly hurled the handset at me.
I caught it at the end of its cord and said: "Captain Schnell, Special
Detail--"
"Oh, I know it is you, Captain Schnell," said the suave voice of
Edward Hazlett Wood. "I just wanted to tell you that your analysis of
the umbrella's uselessness as evidence was quite brilliant. Also your
logic in the matter of my daughter's rain-soaked clothing was clever. I
really don't regret the chewing out you are getting. You deserve it. I
was hoping to find you bright enough to avoid it. Anyway, can we expect
you for dinner this evening?"
"Yes," I snapped, and hung up, thinking a few things that would have
called for a terse reprimand about foul and abusive language if
telepathy were administered by the Federal Communications Commission.
"Wood?" snapped Chief Weston.
"Yes."
"Date?" he snarled.
I groaned. Wood did have the nasty telepath's ability to maneuver me
into a situation that I could not conveniently avoid.
"When they start calling the office to pester you for dates--"
"I know what I'm doing!"
"So do I!" he yelled. "You're doing nothing!"
"Listen, Chief, I'll admit the long arm of coincidence, but you'll have
to admit that when there's trouble, I'm usually the first one to smell
it."
"So how do you connect them up?"
"Chief, I walk out of that apartment with your own words ringing in my
ears. 'Looks like the classical setup for a "perfect crime,"' you said.
And then I meet this girl who just happens to have a father who writes
whodunits and is planning a series of books based upon the 'perfect
crime.'"
"Maybe," sneered Chief Weston, "the guy is a mind reader."
"I've given even that some consideration."
"So I hear tell."
"Any objections?" I asked.
* * * * *
"Objections? I've got a lot of objections!" he howled. "This is a
police department, not a soothsayers' convention! We're subject to
enough criticism as it is. You needn't have added the act that makes us
look like a bunch of damned fools."
"But, Chief, I--"
"So what do I hear tell?" He hauled the tray drawer of his desk
open and pulled out one of the tabloids, opened to one of its
hate-everything columnists. "Listen! 'In recent years the legality of
the famous witchcraft trials of the past has been subject to debate,
with the result that these past convictions have now been declared
"miscarriages of justice." Posthumously, I must unhappily add. However,
there has been little or no amendment to the laws against witchcraft,
wizardry, charms, amulets and spells.
"'But brace yourselves, citizens. One of our younger and more brilliant
captains of detectives has shown an interest recently in parapsychics
and may be training to track down criminals by the application of
extra-sensory detection. If this be true, the laws will have to be
ruptured to permit him to secure evidence, since it is a tenet of the
law that evidence must be secured through legal methods and processes.
"'Fortune Tellers of the World, Arise! You have nothing to lose but
your crystal balls!'"