"The Laughing Girl Mystery”

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 21 December 1935, Page 10

"The Laughing Girl Mystery”

By VIOLA PARADISE

Synopsis _of preceding chapters: ■Sheridan Dinard. chief aide to Dr. Coe, an, Egyptologist who has a private museum in New 1 ork, is hurrying up the stairs to the studio apartment of Adelaide Sayre, his fiancee, when he hears a girlish burst of laughter cut off short. He remarks to Oswald, the coloured janitor, that the girl -must be a blonde with lavender eyes and a short upper lip. Later he laughingly says to Adelaide and Lester Wilcox, also connected with the museum, that it is easy for an archaeologist to reconstruct a girl from her laugh. A girl answering this description is found dead from a stab wound in the apartment of Mr and Mrs ooggs, who are at their country place. An Egyptian statuette, taken from Dinarid’s desk, had been used as a doorknocker to hide a newly-bored peep-hole in the Coggses’ hall door. Inspector Higgins wants to arrest Dinard, but Assistant DistrictAttorney Alby holds him back. A Elorentine dagger used by the murderer is missed from the museum, and Marlin, the English caretaker, disappears. Dr.- Coe, supposed to be at his country place, appears at the museum in a daze. Adelaide destroys a cerise baggage check which shows up mysteriously on her desk. A trunk with such a check is delivered to a man registered at the Hotel Astrakan as Dennis Swift. He takes a packet of letters from it and disappears. .Toey Timmott, 16-year-old bell boy, says Swift is two inches shorter than Dinard. From photographs found in the trunk the slain girl is identified as Daisy Satterly, a ballet dancer, -whom Dinard recalls seeing when they were children in England. A dagger is hurled through Adelaide’s window, burying itself in the bed from which she has just risen.-

CHAPTER XXV.

Despite the debonair message he had left for his “old man,” Joey Timmott looked up and down the street before scooting out of the Hotel Astrakan. His father had a way of cruising in hi? taxi along by the hotel ff he didn’t have a fare at this hour and waiting round to take Joey home. And Joey knew his father.

But luck was with Joey. No sight or sound of the bus. He made for the subway, and reached Twelfth Street in time to see Alby part from Sheridan and Adelaide. Joey dodged behind a 'parked car, -watched Alby turn the corner into Sixth Avenue, then walked along the opposite side of the street, hunting a hiding place from which to do his observing. •It wasn’t so easy. Down the block a way an iron railing enclosed the dooryard entrance to the basement of a bouse, and a row of small potted evergreen trees provided a refuge. A little farther from the scene of the crime than Joey liked; —about two hundred feet.

He had just .slipped behind the prickly evergreens when he saw Alby return, his arms laden with packages, and go into the building. Presently a light came on in the first floor 'apartment. So Mr Alby was talking with the Coggses. But what to detect? Nothing -was happening over there. Except that the lights on the top floor were being put out. • Two windows went dark at once —that would be Miss Sayre’s parlour. And then the shade of the third window' was pulled up, and there was Miss Sayre herself in a kimono opening the bedroom window as wide as it w r ould go. Then the bedroom light, too, went, out. Now, except for the Coggses’, the •whole house was in darkness. . . . Time dragged. Private cars and taxis drove through the street. Look at that Packard. Gosh, what a bus! The engine barely even purred. His old man would like a taxi like that. He noticed its license plate. Then he began noting all the license numbers and playing a game of roadside poker against himself. It helped keep you awake. Gee, here was that Packard again! . . . Joey began to wonder about it. I Presently Alby emerged, looked up and down the street, and crossed over. He refused two taxis. Then the Pack- ] ard slid to a stop right in front of Joey. ‘‘Taxi, sir?” said the driver. “Hello, Burt,” said Alby, opening the door. “Take me to the Brevoort. Haekett on tap?” - Joey did not hear the reply for they drove off. But five minutes later the car was back in the block. This time, instead of going on, it slid to a stop directly in front of Joey, and the driver lighted a cigarette, and slouched comfortably into the corner. Joey now had to twist and stretch to see past the car. But there was nothing to see. Nothing happened. . . . Joey decided that sleuthing had been ovorrf ied. He was chilly, sleepy and cramped. The night stretched endlessly ahead. Hours and hours. Or so it seemed. Pretty soft, Mr Burt, sitting in a swell car to do your detecting! All modern improvements! Joey’s teeth wanted to chatter. He clenched them tight. If only something would happen. Then Joey had a stroke of luck. Mr Burt got out of the taxi, lifted the hood of the engine and looked in. At the same time, another taxi swung round the-corner from Sixth Avenue with a grinding of gears, roared through the block in second speed, and vanished into Fifth Avenue as noisily as it had appeared. As Burt looked after it in disgust, Joey slipped out o this cramped ambush, opened the rear' door of the- closed It

with silent caution and crouched down upon the floor —a floor luxuriously soft and comfortable after hard stone. A thrill of fright. . . . The engine hood was being lowered. But Burt got back into the front seat. . . This was something like! .. . Getting into a make-believe taxi belonging to the police department! ' The only trouble was, he couldn’t see the front door of the house from the taxi without getting up on his knees. Too risky. Burt might feel him there. But, looking up from the floor through the side window, he could see the top two stories of the house —the empty apartment beneath Miss Sayre’s apartment and Miss Savro’s windows, and the roof. In fact, he could make himself quite comfortable and lean back against the further door as he. watched with an easy conscience. Who knows, something might happen up there when Burt’s eyes happened to be examining the front door. . . . As if to confirm his wish, the full moon at this moment came out from behind a fleeting white cloud and glinted on the windows of the top story. He’d watch these windows thoroughly And so he did for what .seemed a million hours. Because his eyelids kept coming down. . . . Even as Joey swelled with daydreams: A great detective, that’s what he’d be. . . Headlines. . . .

Joey Timmott, 16-year-old sleuth, solves baffling murder mystery. . . . Then Joey discovered a new talent. He could see with his eyes closed! . . . And ho could see just as well with his eyes closed! . . . The bright light on the windows. .... ... .

Joey was souiid asleep. . \. . •Two hours later, lie failed to observe a stealthy figure hugging the shadow of the chimney on the roof, slipping an agile foot over the Toof coping, groping confidently for the top of the projecting sto.ne canopy of a window. He did not see the ominous figure reach the sill with the silent grace of a black cat, draw back an arm, and hurl a dagger at Adelaide Sayre’s pillow. He did. not see the criminal pull himself swiftly back to the roof, towards the shadows cast by the row of chimneys. Joey slept soundly through all this. But he opened his eyes as a black slipper fell through the air,-and a black leg and foot were vanishing, and a figure rolling back from the edge of the roof into shadow, i

With a shrill cry lie was up and out of the taxi, and into the arms of Burt. For Burt, toO, had seen the falling, slipper—though not the figure on the roof —and had been dashing to get it. Burt’s revolver was sticking against Joey’s ribs. But Joey didn’t notice it. “The roof,”-he cried. “Quick. He’ll get away'!” Joey tried in vain to wrench himself out of Burt’s hold. Burt was blowing his whistle. “That, thing he dropped!” cried Joey. And then, "Damn you, Burt, he’ll get away!”

I It seemed ages—it was only spends. Three policemen and another plainclothes man had sprung up from nowhere. “Here, take a handkerchief to that!” ordered Burt to a policeman who was picking up the slipper. ‘ 1 Get in and up to the roof!” he ordered anj other. “Hold on to this insect,” he said to a third, “and keep watch out here. Shoot anyone who tries to make. 1 a getaway.” • The insect struggled with squirms 1 and words for freedom. “Take me in with you, Mr Burt. It’s all right! I’m i helping Mr Alby! Honest! Please!” _ I But Burt was gone. And an ordin- ' ary policeman was marching him ignominiously up and down before* the house. Now Joey sought desperately for some--1 thing which might have escaped the i others. But in vain. He had missed his chance. Muffed it, like a dppe! Anv number of other people were going • freely into the house! More policemen. I . . . More detectives. . . . A man with a camera now appeared on the roof. . . I Flashlights. . . . Photographing foot- ; prints, likely. If only he were up there! He begged the policeman to let go of him. “No danger of me beating it, officer!” But the officer only tightened his hold. Then familiar sounds smote him. A taxi, rounding the corner, could be onlv one taxi. The suck of the tyres on the pavement, the skipped beat in the engine. ... Joey had reached his ; all-time low, as his father appeared. j“So here you are!” said Mr Timmott. .“And your mother half crazy. Get into the bus.” I “I’m working on a murder case for Mr Alby, the Assistant District-Attor-j ney,” he said with forced blitheness. “Oh, yeah? Well, I spent two hours tracking him down, and I been talking to him, see? Get in!” “So that’s the dope.” The police officer grunted. “Well, big boy, I guess you gotta hang around a while. My orders is to keep hold of this inseck.” “All right, hold fast,” said Mr Timmott, “while I go telephone a buddy to get word to his mother. But don’t squash the inseck,” Mr Timmott turned to say, ‘ J.f’m saving that up for myself.” By which Joey knew that he had nothing to fear. His old man never 1 wasted words when really mad. . . . And Mr Alby must have told him about the height guessing. . . The old 1 man wasn’t so bad. His soaring spirits stimulated his mind. Gee, lie ought to be able to dope out something about that man ’ on the housetop. Let’s see. . . . ‘ As the officer walked him up and ; down, Joey pretended to himself that ' he was sitting in the bottom of the 1 ! taxi and looking up at the. window. He closed his eyes. Yes, it was just as i plain—lie could see everything ho had seen in the split seconds between the time when the falling slipper wakened ’ I him, and the time he was out of the > taxi in Burt’s arms. The leg that had ;; disappeared, he hadn’t seen, all of it,

onlv from tlio knee Cown. But he could remembes the exact angle at which the knee was bent, and the exact angle of the foot., and the size and shape of the shadow they cast on the window shade. . . That might be useful to Mr Alby. He opened his eyes at the sound ot another car. Here was the Assistant District-Attorney himself. “Mr Alby'!” Joey cried, “I been observing. Please take me in with you. I saw the mans leg as it went over ” ‘ ‘ Voting man,” said Alby' severely, "your father woke me up out of a souud sleep!” "Gee, that’s tough, Mr Alby. But I been observing, I tell you. Only' I fell asleep on the floor of Burt’s car, and I only' saw the end of it. Please, Mr Alby,” Joey’s voice was a cry of anguish.' “Mr Alby, you just couldn’t not take me in!”

Alby looked at the boy. "Do you know how to keep your mouth shut?” “Oh, boy! I could teach oysters!” “All right, officer, I’ll take him over.”

The policeman let go. < ‘'Tell my father, officer,” Joey called loftily over his shoulder, “not to wait up for mo. I don’t know just what time I’ll be home.” Inside the hall, Alby asked an officer where Burt was. “Top floor,” he replied, “or the roof. They’re all up there except Hackett, who’s in with the Coggses. And Odleigh and Burnett are out back, looking over fire escapes.” . Upstairs they found Burt refusing the impassioned plea of Adelaide to see Sheridan. “He’s 0.K., Miss,” Burt was saying. “Nobody’s been throwing knives at him.” The moment Alby entered, Adelaide appealed to him. “Something is the matter, Mr Alby. Or they’d let me see him. Please ” “In -due time, Miss Sayre. Now, he demanded of Burt, “what happened?” (To be continued daily.)