you about Annie, when you have time. Too bad I can’t have my stamp collection with me, but it’s far too bulky. However, you will see to it that my mail is forwarded to me here? It’s such a very important letter—”
Malone promised that he would, and practically fled down the corridor in the wake of von Flanagan.
In von Flanagan’s office he borrowed the phone, called his secretary and said, “Maggie? Chase out and buy all the latest magazines for stamp collectors. I want to take them, as a present, to a client of mine.” He hung up quickly—before Maggie could explain that she’d have to pay for them with her own money—took out a cigar and began to unwrap it.
“See what I mean?” von Flanagan said. “This is going to be a cinch for you, Malone. No jury in the world would convict him. And he can play with his stamp collection, and wait for his mail in some expensive sanitarium.” He paused, scowled, and said, “I still think—the Behavior Clinic—”
“You try it,” Malone said, “and I’ll have a belt and fancy wallet made out of your hide. He’s my client and I’m going to protect him. I’m going to hire the best alienists in the country. He can afford the best.”
“And the best lawyers, too,” von Flanagan muttered, sitting down behind his impressive desk. He added under his breath a remark about such-and-such shysters.
Malone ignored this, lit a cigar and said, “As a matter of fact, perhaps you could handle this yourself. Last time I talked with you, you were taking up the study of psychiatry.”
“No future in it,” von Flanagan said, gloomily. “All my wife’s relatives would want me to take them on as patients. For free. No, I’ve settled on something to do when I retire, and I’m not going to tell you what it is.”
“Maybe you ought to go back to your original idea of raising mink,” Malone said. He strolled over to the window and stood looking down on the dreary, muddy street. It was a depressing-looking world, he decided, and Mr. Rodney Fairfaxx was well out of it, in his nice, comfortable cell. He fingered the wrinkled five-dollar bill in his pocket and wondered just whom he ought to go after for his retainer.
Von Flanagan said, “Don’t get sore, Malone. You ought to be grateful to me for giving you a made-to-order client like this.”
“Grateful, hell,” Malone growled. “Next thing, you’ll be wanting me to split fees.”
He went moodily out to the street, considered riding a streetcar to the Fairfaxx home, and gave up the idea when a taxi came within hailing distance.
Something was very wrong about this case.
He’d had clients who were slightly cracked or very cracked. He’d had clients who had beaten the rap on an insanity defense. But Mr. Rodney Fairfaxx puzzled him. Malone had a definite and uncomfortable feeling that this client was sane.
It looked like one of these open and shut cases. A poor old guy who’d been just a little tetched ever since his girl friend went down on the Titanic. That could be enough reason for being just a little tetched, and for just going along all these years, believing that she’d never taken the boat at all and was alive and well somewhere in England, and going to write a letter to him any day now.
Yes, a guy could lose his sense of time, in a case like that. He could forget that it had been thirty years and believe it had been only a few months. He could, eventually, go completely off the beam and start murdering the postmen who didn’t bring the letter he had been waiting for all this time.
A story like that would make any jury break down and bawl, and acquit a double-ax murderer.
Only, it wasn’t true.
Malone had seen murderers putting on an act for an insanity defense; indeed, he’d more than once coached them in the act. He knew that Rodney Fairfaxx wasn’t acting.
For the same reasons he knew that while Rodney Fairfaxx had withdrawn from the world to wait for a postman bringing one certain letter, he was otherwise perfectly sane.
Von Flanagan had handed him a perfect case. Only the trouble was, he knew that von Flanagan didn’t believe it either. That was what was really wrong. Because he didn’t know just why von Flanagan didn’t believe it.
Malone broke the five-dollar bill with a pang of regret and paid off the driver in front of the Fairfaxx home.
Suddenly, he decided to go up the alley for one more look at the scene of the crime.
It still didn’t tell him much. Just an alley, like any other alley in the world. Except that three postmen had been found murdered on its badly littered pavement.
Malone sighed, and looked up at the house. That bay window belonged to the paneled library where Mr. Rodney Fairfaxx had been arrested this afternoon. The old man insisted he had looked down from that window and discovered the body of the third postman.
Von Flanagan’s theory was that Rodney Fairfaxx had crept down the back staircase and lain in wait for his victim. Then, having committed his third murder, he’d hurried back up to his library and pretended to make the discovery.
At least, von Flanagan claimed that was his theory.
A hungry, obviously homeless mutt strayed up the alley in search of food. Malone instinctively and absent-mindedly patted him, whereupon the mutt, recognizing a friend, set up a loud, joyful and frenzied barking.
About two seconds later a good-sized stone came hurtling over the garden wall, missing Malone by inches and frightening the mutt into a hasty and noisy flight. Malone stared at the stone for a moment, then picked it up and hurled it back over the wall.
There was a loud and angry roar. A fat, red, bad-tempered face appeared over the top of the wall.
“What the hell do you mean?” the indignant face asked, furiously.
“What the hell do you mean?” Malone said, as calmly as he could. “Throwing stones!” He added insultingly, “And at your age, too.”
The man on the other side of the wall clenched his teeth, unclenched them again and said, “I threw it at a dog. I don’t like dogs.”
“I’m not a dog,” Malone said, “I’m a lawyer.”
“Makes no difference,” the angry man said, “I don’t like lawyers, either. As a matter of fact, they’re worse.” He disappeared.
Malone considered climbing the wall and giving the red-faced man a good punch in the nose. On second thought, he gave it up. Right now, he didn’t have time to waste on frivolous pleasures. Besides, it would be undignified. And anyway, he didn’t know just how big the man was.
Could a stone thrown over a garden wall kill a man? Chances were that it could. Properly aimed and timed, of course.
The little lawyer continued his exploration of the alley. He reminded himself that the series of unfortunate postmen had been killed by a blow on the head from someone on the side of the wall that surrounded the house of Fairfaxx. It had to be that way, unless every technician in the police department had slipped up, possibly in a moment of madness. Madness might affect a few technicians, but not all of them.
No, there was no doubt, from the way the body had been found. Someone
