The Babe With the Twistable Arm by Stone Hampton

Author:Stone, Hampton [Stone, Hampton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp, Mystery
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1962-11-13T11:06:39+00:00

6.

Lester Lennox chose that, of all moments, to insist on laboring a little problem of his own. I’ve never known whether Gibby is essentially a patient or an impatient man. Give him a murder puzzle to work on and he’ll come up with all the patience it needs. But interrupt him with some silly, inconsequential bit of nonsense and he’ll blast you right out of your shoes.

So when Lester snapped his fingers and shouted that he had it, he knew what happened, actually he’d done it himself, it was obvious that he would be referring to neither of our main events—not the one murder or the other, or to the matter immediately in hand—who socked Richard Temple III on the head. See what I mean? How silly and irrelevant can you get? Who’s going to be patient with a man whose timing is that bad?

Oddly and surprisingly Gibby was patient. He broke everything off to listen; and, then I began remembering stuff that explained it to me. There were all those details back in Florrie’s apartment and we still had them to check with Lester. Some time very soon we would be taking him there and asking him exactly what items of old clothes he’d had hanging on those hooks in his old room.

Looking ahead to those questions, Gibby was wise to refrain from discouraging Lester when he showed signs of putting his mind to the little things. To be that wise under stress takes a lot of doing, but I suppose that’s another thing I can say for Gibby. Any time he needs it, he will also come up with all the wisdom it takes.

The big deal Lester had for us couldn’t have been more characteristic. If you have never been around the entertainment world and have never known a real, slow-cured, hickory-smoked, hundred-per-cent ham, you may not understand it. Then take my word for it. This was Lester all over. That boy was from Smithfield. Flash a beaten biscuit at him and he’d never miss sitting down on it.

So what was the big news? Florrie had been pistol whipped until she was dead. Daddyo had been clubbed with a table leg till he was dead. Junior is looking us in the eye and giving Walt Rowan the credit for the hit in the head which came close to being all I had so far contributed to the case. That, I suppose, didn’t sit too well with the ham in me—so what’s on Lester’s mind? Lester is sick with the thought that, through some malfunctioning of the public-address gadget that piped his Sound and his Beat back to this band room, he’d had a stretch of playing to an audience that was less by one than he’d thought it to be. We were concerned with matters of life and death. Lester was concerned with matters of Art.

The gadget had only the one switch, the one on the loud speaker in the band room. There was, however, another way it could be disconnected; and Lester had suddenly remembered.

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