MURDER ON MAIN STREET by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant [Grant, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-14T23:18:01+00:00

CHAPTER VIII

PUTTING the little loop of string around his forefinger, Cranston let the free end of the string go through the trigger guard of the deputy’s pistol. Then he picked up the free end of string and brought it up to the fingers of his right hand which already had the loop of string on the first finger.

That done, he began to whirl the pistol around. It gathered speed. It made a blue steel arc around in front of him.

The sheriff, watching, thought if anyone looked in and saw this they’d think we were as loopy as Jimmy Jason.

“Imagine,” Cranston said, “that I am whirling this in the open… or from a jail window. When it was whirling around fast enough, I would release the free end of the string. The loop on my finger would be held, the string would whip out and the gun would whip off into space just as surely as did the little stone that David slung at Goliath!”

It was, in effect, a primitive catapult.

Letting the gun slow down, Cranston said, “The Apache would hold someone up… perhaps kill them… then… if there was any sign of the ‘flics’, or police, the Apache would whirl the gun off into space. All evidence gone, he would face the gendarme with a free conscience. You may not realize it, but a heavy object like a pistol; swung this way, will fly up and over a five-story apartment building!”

The deputy said, “We found the rifle across the street, five houses down…”

“If Jason,” the sheriff said slowly, “had thrown the empty shell out the window… and the string, there’d have been no proof that he had even seen the rifle.”

“The Underground,” Cranston said, as if there had been no interruption, “took over the old Apache trick. They’d chance it and shoot an S.S. man… or a Gestapo agent, and then, ridding themselves of the gun, stand pat and look innocent.”

The phone interrupted this time. The sheriff picked it up and heard, “Hi, this is Bascomb… out at the Archer house.”

“Uh huh. Go ahead. What about… Mrs. Archer?”

“You know all about that, she was shot all right. But listen, I found a whole flock of threatening letters in a cigar box in Mr. Archer’s clothes closet!”

“Bring ‘em down right quick!” The sheriff hung the receiver back on the hook. He said to Cranston, “Maybe our side is getting a break.” He relayed the message about the letters.

“Good… but don’t be too disappointed if they don’t help too much,” Cranston said.

The letters when they arrived were wrapped in string. The envelopes had been discarded evidently, for the letters were just folded on themselves and stuffed in the box. Seemingly they were in something like chronological order, for the threats increased in intensity as Cranston and the sheriff went through the pile.

An occasional letter was dated. One went back almost six years, as Cranston pointed out to the sheriff. For a long time the letters went, ‘Your doom is on you.’ Merely that, and nothing more.

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