Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

“It was only the second time I’d ever met the man,” Garrick declared. “The rest of the time he was only a damned unpleasant voice on the phone, demanding money a couple of times a year. He called me ten days ago and... well, I couldn’t raise what he wanted this time. You know how it’s been in the real estate game this year. But the little leech wouldn’t let me off the hook and, to make a long story short, the only way I could shut him up was to promise, to bring him a necklace belonging to my wife.”

“There was another way,” McKay observed, “and it occured to somebody.”

Garrick looked startled. “Well, it wasn’t me. He was alive when I left at about ten-forty-five. And kicking about not having had any dinner. Said he was going to fix himself a sandwich or something.” The big man fell into a brooding silence momentarily, then added with a worried frown, “Look, Lieutenant, is all this going to get out — into the papers, I mean? If my wife ever learns about—”

“We usually try to cooperate with blackmail victims,” McKay said.

“Provided they cooperate with us,” Herndon added.

The living room phone rang at that point, and he scooped it up for a brief monosyllabic conversation. “Our second license number is on the way,” he told McKay, who was giving Garrick a questioning look.

“What did you do to your hands?” he asked.

Garrick looked at the adhesive strips across his knuckles as if he’d never seen them before. “Those? I was doing some pruning in the yard yesterday. Picked up some scratches. Should’ve worn gloves, I suppose.”

“I see.”

Garrick had little more to add and could produce nothing approaching an alibi for the pre-midnight hours, so McKay convoyed him to the bedroom, where Nicky Preston and Jim Sanders already waited. Garrick was perfectly agreeable, even relieved, asking only if he could call his office on the bedroom extension, to which McKay made no objection.

When the detective returned, the second of the missing drivers was just arriving — a heavy, florid-faced man of perhaps fifty-five, with short-clipped grey hair and heavy-framed eyeglasses. His name was Dr. Arthur Sonntag, and he was angrier than a popbottle full of hornets at having been abstracted from the campus of the university where he dispensed political science. Dr. Sonntag fizzed out abruptly when he learned that he had been placed on the murder scene by a witness, and became almost ludicrously tractable.

Unfortunately, his story turned out to be almost identical to Robertson Garrick’s — even to the time at which he was supposed to have arrived, ten-forty-five.

“Perhaps it was later,” he admitted cautiously, rubbing his close-cropped head as though to stimulate thought. “I was, you understand, upset. I paid not much attention to the time.”

Like Garrick, Dr. Sonntag had no alibi prior to midnight, claiming that he left Willy alive and well, and returned directly to his apartment. Also like Garrick, he was soon relegated to the bedroom and asked to wait.

McKay took the following few minutes to hear such reports as the technical crews could make from their preliminary investigations, reports that added little of substance to the information already known, then returned to the library to find Herndon seated at the desk, a small red-covered journal in his hands and a look of satisfaction on his face.

“Found this in a false-bottomed drawer,” he said. “Looks like a record of Willy’s business deals since he got sprung.”

“Names?”

“Sure. All of them seven letters long — and most of ’em unpronounceable. I’ve been trying a letter frequency check, but there’s no particular pattern of letter repetition. The only real peculiarity is that Q and Z never show up at all.”

“A twenty-four letter code?” McKay mused. “Odd. I knew of a word-square code that used twenty-five letters — dropped the J and I recall — but I can’t see — I imagine the guys in Cryptanalysis should take a crack at it.”

“I suppose you’ve noticed that each of our suspects so far has a seven-letter name?” said Herndon.

McKay gave him a surprised look. “I should say I have, but it ain’t so,” he confessed. “That’s interesting, isn’t it? And you’re including Nicky Preston as a suspect?”

“I can’t quite see her beating up on Weedy Willy,” said Herndon, “but she could have done it. Especially if she were good and mad and defending her boyfriend — or if they were working together.”

“But Garrick’s the one with marks on his hands.”

“The others might have worn gloves,” Herndon pointed out.

“Sanders says Willy was dead when he arrived. Garrick and Sonntag both say they left him alive, at least twenty minutes before Sanders got here.

“But there’s nothing says either of them couldn’t have sneaked back, maybe even on foot, in the time interval. Assuming, of course, that Sanders is telling the truth.”

McKay stretched and yawned tiredly. “What it all boils down to is, which one of those four answers to the name of kwixote?”

“Sanders?” Herndon guessed. “On account of the play?”