Tough Guys & Dangerous Dames (1993) Anthology by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Kid Clips A Coupon

Erle Stanley Gardner

I

The Clue of the Jam

Dan Seller lounged in the big chair and listened as Police Inspector Phil Brame recounted the circumstances of the crime for the edification of the small group of cronies who frequented the choice corner of the club.

“Just a plain case of murder,” Inspector Brame was saying, “and a bit of strawberry jam is going to send the guy to the chair.”

“I don’t think Dan Higgins intended to commit murder when he broke into the place. Mrs. Morelay, paralyzed from the hips down, was in the living room, seated in her wheel chair, going over a bunch of account books. Higgins broke in to get some food. Mrs. Morelay heard him moving around in the kitchen. There was a telephone attached to her wheel chair. She called police headquarters and reported someone in her kitchen, stealing food.

“Higgins heard her telephoning. It sent him into a furious rage. The man was hungry. He dashed into the room and split the woman’s head open with a hatchet he had picked up in the kitchen. Then he helped himself to food. He spread some homemade strawberry jam on a slice of bread and ate it. He spilled some jam on his necktie without knowing it. He had gone less than a block from the place when the police radio car came along.

“Higgins looked like just the type who would be stealing food—a half-starved chap with clothes that were pretty much the worse for wear. Our men stopped and picked him up on suspicion and then went to the house and found that murder had been committed. Higgins denied he’d been near the house, and he’d evidently learned his lesson about fingerprints, because there were no fingerprints on any of the stuff in the kitchen. The police found a pair of dirty gloves in his pocket. Evidently he’d worn those while he was eating. But there was strawberry jam on his tie. The jam was analyzed. The amount of sugar it contained was carefully noted by the police chemists, and then an analysis was made of the strawberry jam in the jar in the sink. The jam on the tie Higgins was wearing at the time of his arrest came from that jar of homemade jam.”

“Wasn’t there some one who saw him leaving the house?” Renfroe, the banker, asked.

“Yes,” Brame said. “Walter Stagg, the man who acts as manager for Mrs. Morelay, drove up to the house in his automobile. He arrived there almost at the same time that the police did. He was just coming up the cement walk when the police car rounded the corner. He said that he had seen Higgins coming around the back of the house, as though he had either slipped out of a window, or had been snooping around the house. Stagg said he intended to unlock the front door—which was always kept on a night latch—and see if anything was wrong. If anything was missing, he was determined to jump into his car and follow the man until he could notify a policeman.

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