Strangler Bauermont
Sam spoke directly to Canneziano. “Did you ever know a man named
Bauermont—Lewis Bauermont?”
“Strangler Bauermont? Very well indeed. Has he anything to do with
it?”
“What’s that you called him?” Sam asked, sharply.
“Strangler Bauermont, you mean?”
I remembered that Danny had told me his nickname was “Mexico.”
Sam said, “That’s what I mean. How did he come by a name like that?”
“He is by way of being a wrestler, I believe; and won the name for
some particularly clever hold that brought his man down every time. I
have never gone in for that sort of thing—can’t give you scientific
details. He was a jiu-jitsu expert, also. Oh, no, no,” as he noticed
our quickening interests. “He is a continent and an ocean away, at
present. Moreover, murder is quite outside his line—quite. And he was,
I believe, rather smitten than otherwise with the Gaby.”
“You are sure he is in Europe now?” Sam questioned.
“I had a letter from him, only a few days ago, written and sent from
Deauville. A cable to Scotland Yard would locate him precisely for
you, I have no doubt. Assuming, of course, that you don’t mind
spending a few dollars.”
“I suppose,” Sam mused, “that he could easy teach his strangling trick
to another man.”
“Undoubtedly. But isn’t the entire connection rather foolish, when one
stops to think that Strangler has been, for years, badly smitten with
the lady?”
“I guess he got over that,” Sam said. “Seems, now, as if he was
anxious to be shed of her.”
“Oh-ho! And he famous for his constancy to the Gaby. Nine, ten,
I don’t know how many years. However, though I’ll grant his name
belies it, he was a smooth, diplomatic cuss. I think you can be
practically certain that he would draw the line at murder—under any
circumstances.”
“That letter you had from him,” Sam said. “I suppose you destroyed
it?”
“I don’t tie my letters into packets bound with blue ribbons.”
“Was it written in code?”
“No. You see, the hotel where I was putting up just then was, one
might say, over regulated. Letters written in code were not favorably
regarded there.”
“Could you read a letter written in his code?”
“I fancy so. If you have a Spanish dictionary.”
“There was nothing Spanish about this one. It was just a jumble of
letters.”
“I don’t know it then. I’m rather clever with codes, however. I fancy
I could decipher it, with a bit of study.”
“Do they speak Spanish in Mexico?” I questioned; and was rewarded by
having all present look at me as if they thought that I had just
developed a yearning for cultural, geographical knowledge.
“I am getting at something,” I explained. “Was this Bauermont man ever
in Mexico?”
“Unfriendly persons,” Canneziano answered, “insinuate that Mexico is
his native land.”
“Did anyone ever call him ‘Mexico’?”
“To his fury, yes. Is it relevant?”
Sam asked, “Where were you, do you know, at the time of the Tonopah
train robbery, three years ago? You were here, right shortly after
that, I seem to remember.”
“I stopped for a friendly visit, and you kicked me out, and into my
downfall at ’Frisco. My three years in the big house are at your door.
But I hold no grudge.”
“What I want to know is, where were you at the time of the train
robbery?”
“I was in Denver, since you insist.”
“Was this Strangler fellow there with you?”
“He was. Pardon my curiosity, but is this leading to something?”
“I don’t know. Do you? This Strangler friend of yours told the girls
that you and he robbed that train.”
Canneziano’s face went dark and ugly. “So the girls say, ugh?”
“He told them that,” John said. There was threat enough in his voice
to make Canneziano come off his perch.
“Is that possible?” he questioned, but pleasantly enough. “I can’t see
his motive. As a matter of fact, when we read the accounts of how
easily the thing had been pulled off, we did rather regret that we had
not taken a try at it ourselves. If he had not included himself in his
confession to the girls, I would think that he had some friendly
reason for preferring me in captivity. . . . No, I don’t get it.”
“We think he has denied it, since,” Sam said. “We think that the code
letter, which none of us can read, is his denial. No matter. Your
story tots up straight enough with the one we have.”
“Gratifying, I am sure. I wonder whether I might see this code letter?
As I’ve remarked—I’ve a beastly habit of bragging, I hope you don’t
mind—I am rather clever with the things.”
I went upstairs to get it. I am not denying that it gave me the creeps
to go into Gaby’s room, alone at night. When I opened the door, and
saw that the light on the table was lit, and that someone was standing
beside it, I all but jumped out of my shoes.
It was Mrs. Ricker. She turned to me, and apologized, quietly, for
having startled me. “I was looking at these things,” she went on.
“They know. They were there. If only one of them could talk——”
“I thought,” I am sure I spoke too tartly, “that you knew. You said
that you did.”
“Sam doesn’t believe it,” she answered. “Doesn’t that give me, her
mother, a right to doubt, if I can?”
I was all out of sorts. “It would have been better to have doubted it,
in the first place,” I said.
“I know. But I didn’t—I couldn’t. Sam does. And then, that man coming
into the house to-night—I can’t explain it; but, someway, he made all
of us, even Hubert, seem so good. The house itself felt, to me—do you
understand?—good. As if any wicked thing would have to come into it
from the outside, from far away, just as he came into it to-night?”
I did understand. I had had that feeling of drawing close to the
others and away from him, the minute he had come into the room. But I
was so put out with her, for startling me, and for being in Gaby’s
room, anyway, poking around—though land knows she had a right to be
there, and I might have done the same thing myself, with my lists of
clues, and so on—that I just said I supposed so, and picked up the
letter, at the same time looking over the other things on the table to
be sure nothing was missing.
“Perhaps,” she said, “I should not have come in here? I suppose, when
the detective comes, he—she would like to see the room as nearly as
possible undisturbed. Do you think it would be a good plan to lock it,
and to give the key to Sam, until she does come?”
She went around with me, while I locked the doors on the inside. We
had to lock the doors in Danny’s room, too, since the two rooms had
only the curtained doorway between them. We went into the hall through
Danny’s room. I locked that door after us. She told me good-night and
went to her own room. I went downstairs, and gave the key and the
letter to Sam.
“Wise idea, Mary,” he said, when I told him that I had locked the
rooms, “I suppose Canneziano would tell you, though, that locked doors
do not a prison make.” He handed the letter to him.
“Looks rather confusing, doesn’t it?” Canneziano said, when he had
unfolded and straightened the pages. “Still, these things are
generally quite simple. What price deciphering it, Sam?”
“No price, to you,” Sam answered.
He returned the letter to its envelope and tossed it on the table.
“Fair enough,” he said.
“I fancy,” he questioned, next, “that Lynn MacDonald is going to get
rather a good thing out of this, eh?”
“That depends on her success,” Sam answered.
“Yes? I understand that she takes jobs on that basis quite often. It
is not thoroughly approved in the best criminal circles. Too much
incentive to frame a case. However, that theory of framing has been
over exploited. My proposition, cards on the table, is this: If I beat
the lady to it, discover the murderer before she does, will you pay me
what you have agreed to pay her?”
“Canneziano,” Sam said, “get this. Get it now. I’ll pay you not one
red cent for anything. Not one red cent.”
“Fair enough,” Canneziano repeated. “And my mistake. Undoubtedly, I
should have worded it differently. For instance— What will you pay me
not to discover the murderer on the Desert Moon Ranch?”
A week ago, Sam would have got up and kicked him out through the door
for that question. This evening Sam sat still and looked him over,
sort of sliding his eyes up and down over his smooth dapperness.
Finally he drawled, “Go as far as you like, Canneziano. Only—you won’t
get anywhere you’d like to be, not on that line.”
“Presently, perhaps,” Canneziano answered. “No hurry.”
I’ll be switched if Sam didn’t sit there and murmur, mildly, “‘Said
the carpenter,’” to himself.