The Leather Duke

Johnny put his eye to the shaft. He found himself watching the back of the nearest counter sorter — Elliott Towner. He looked thoughtfully at the back of the Leather Duke’s son, for a long moment, then shifted his glance to the next bench. It was vacant, Sam Cragg’s place. Beyond it, on the left, Joe Genara was working and to the left of him two men with whom Johnny had not yet got acquainted. Past them was Cliff Goff, the horse player. Then came Johnny’s bench and, finally, at the very end, next to Johnson’s desk, the bench of old Axel Swensen.

As Johnny looked, Karl Kessler, the assistant foreman, came walking into the sorting department. He said a word or two to Swensen, then stopped at Johnny’s bench and began idly resorting some of the bunches of counters Johnny had piled up early that morning.

Sam moved up behind Johnny and bent down. “What’re you looking at, Johnny?” he whispered.

“Men at work,” replied Johnny.

“Jeez,” Sam exclaimed suddenly. “Maybe the murderer was watchin’ us workin’ yesterday morning.” He shivered. “Gives you a funny feeling.”

“What I can’t figure out,” said Johnny, “is why Al Piper came back here in the first place. He ran a skiving machine, which is out in the main room.”

“Maybe he came back here to meet, uh, whoever it was who killed him.”

“Which meant that he knew the man.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“But why couldn’t he talk to him out in the open?”

“You asking me, Johnny, or yourself?”

“Myself, I guess.”

Johnny sighed and rose to his full length. “What time did you come back here to help Joe with the barrels yesterday, Sam?”

“I didn’t look at the clock, Johnny, but I guess it was about a half hour after we started to work.”

“That would have been around ten o’clock, and it was an hour or so before you found him here. But he’d been dead for an hour to two hours then. In other words, he could have been killed as early as nine o’clock...”

“At that time we weren’t even working here yet.”

“Cut it out, Sam,” exclaimed Johnny. “We know we didn’t kill him.”

“That’s right,” exclaimed Sam. “We know that.”

“And one other person knows we didn’t do it — the murderer.”

Sam looked about uneasily. “You know, Johnny, I don’t like working here. I keep thinking somebody’s watching me. It’s too dark and too many places to hide. A guy could throw a knife at you before you knew it.”

Johnny snapped his fingers. “Sam, you’ve done it!”

“What’ve I done?”

“Given me my first clue. The knife.”

“But the copper said it was your knife!”

“I know it wasn’t my knife, Sam. Think back — when you found Al Piper and we were all nosing around here, there was no sign of any knife. It wasn’t until later that Lindstrom found my knife, back here. Planted. Yet Piper was killed with a knife.”

“Yeah, sure, but I don’t get your point. The guy who done it didn’t want to leave his knife laying here, because it could be traced to him.”

“Right, Sam — to a certain point. There are a lot of knives around here; every counter sorter has one. But if it was stolen from one of the benches it would be missed in a matter of minutes, because the sorters are always using their knives to trim leather. For the same reason, the sorters — if one of them was the murderer — couldn’t use his own knife to do the job. He couldn’t be sure he’d have time enough to really wash the knife thoroughly, without being seen. Those leather knives are eight inches long, sharp as razors and with long points. You can’t fold them so you can’t carry them around in your pocket.” Johnny drew a deep breath. “So it’s my idea that the murderer didn’t use a leather knife at all. He used a folding pocket-knife, which he could put into his pocket without washing. Then he got to worrying about that, was afraid there might be a search and blood found on his clothes, so he stole one of the knives from the bench and dumped it here.”

“And he just picked your knife by accident?”

“Maybe,” said Johnny. “And maybe not. I was a new man on the job. The police would waste a lot of time trying to ferret out the history of a man nobody around here knew anything about.”

“The cops couldn’t find out much about us, the way we’ve always moved around,” Sam said. “Of course, if they took our fingerprints...”

“Speaking of fingerprints, I wonder if Lieutenant Lindstrom went over that knife of mine that was planted here. I guess I’ll never know the answer to that because Lindstrom isn’t in much of a co-operating mood. Anything we learn we’ve got to dig up ourselves. And I guess we might as well get started.”

“How?”

“Go back to your bench and talk-talk to everyone you can. If they get sore, fine; people spill things when they’re mad. Talk about the murder.”

“What about work?”

“Keep on working. At least enough to make it look good.”

Chapter Fourteen

They started out of the aisle, went to the one that cut through to the counter sorting department. As they came through, they ran into Karl Kessler, about to go into the aisle.