The Shadow 299 The Banshee Murders by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant [Grant, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781425017613
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 2006-01-30T22:59:17+00:00

“They must have kept ponies here, Lamont!”

“Wrong,” replied Cranston. “They kept goats. It was quite fun, years ago, for children to go riding in little wagons drawn by goats. You should delve into the history of Central Park, Margo.”

There were larger stalls on the other side of the stable, near the big door, while in a corner Cranston indicated a platform set in the stone floor.

“They kept horses in those big stalls,” he explained, “and there were a lot more downstairs. That platform is an elevator that was used to haul hay up from below.”

The wooden platform rattled when Cranston stepped upon it, but it bore his weight quite easily.

“This elevator was used last night,” declared Cranston in a tone that seemed more than mere conjecture.

“A taxicab was hauled up from the floor below and sent out through the big door. Another cab came in and was lowered to the transverse level. After that the elevator was brought up again.”

Margo suddenly shook her head.

“Couldn’t be,” she insisted. “The elevator may be strong enough, but there’s no motive power to haul up anything as heavy as a taxicab.”

“I told you about the rope,” reminded Cranston. “It was hooked to the elevator.”

“But who pulled it? A dozen men?”

“The merry-go-round pulled it. That’s where the rope was attached. The rope is under the merry-go-round now, all wound around.”

With that statement, Lamont Cranston was explaining the muffed music that Phil Harley had heard the night before. Margo knew nothing about that, but she realized the importance of the cab switch.

“You mean that’s how Winslow Ames was abducted?” Margo asked.

“It’s how the job was covered up,” returned Cranston. “I think that Ames was taken along past the merry-go-round and later dropped from a bridge over the transverse into a passing truck.”

“What would the police think of that story?”

“If you would like to know,” responded Cranston, blandly, “suppose we go and find out.”

They rode in the old hack to Central Park South and there took a cab to the swank Cobalt Club where Commissioner Weston was often found late in the afternoon. The commissioner was present and Inspector Cardona with him, but when Cranston suggested his theory, it registered a total blank.

“I was thinking about the Ames case,” began Cranston. “If his cab had gone to Central Park -“

“I suppose the banshee would have gotten him,” interrupted Weston. “Only it didn’t, because there isn’t any banshee and Ames didn’t go to Central Park.”

Cardona added an opinion.

“We’re covering the park like a blanket,” the inspector claimed. “The only cab that gave us any trouble was a fellow with a flat at the entrance to a transverse. He fixed the flat and went through.”

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