Gun in Cheek Read Online Free PDF Page A

damning motive for murder. Cora is particularly pithy in her condemnation: "Does anybody know whether cretinism causes people to see better in the dark than normally built people?"
    Dr. Anthony isn't so sure of Gargoyle's guilt, though. As he confides to Penny later, "I'm inclined to think that there is a much deeper psychological basis for this crime than a dwarf committing murder to avenge a personal insult."
    Another startling development occurs the following morning, when Jorgenson is found stabbed to death in his cottage.
    Anthony and Penny immediately rush to the scene, where the doctor soon discovers that the artist did not die instantly from his wounds. He had time to crawl to a desk, on which was a sketch pad, and to draw three Indian symbols—eagle feathers, a snake, and a tepee. Anthony decides these must be a clue to the identity of the murderer, so he carts the note off to his portable laboratory for further study. He also carts the corpse off to the portable lab for a quick autopsy—a medical talent sorely lacking in most other ADs.
    Some time later, while Anthony is preparing his equipment so that that he can put his motion-picture theory of crime detection and prevention into its first practical use, Sonia Zarzour appears and tells the doctor and Penny that she has something to show them in the cellar. The something turns out to be a ladder and a trapdoor in the ceiling. "That opening," she says, "allows a person to enter into the hollow body of the statue of the black cat in the dining room. If you will climb up the ladder, Doctor, you will find that you can enter the interior of the black cat and look through its open mouth into the dining room."
    Anthony makes an immediate deduction: "Now we know how the murder of Mr. Lang could have been committed. Someone standing inside the body of the black cat would be able to fire a revolver through its mouth!" And when Mrs. Zarzour proceeds to tell them that Gargoyle used to climb up inside the cat and make ghostly noises to frighten the guests, as part of her husband's Mystery Lodge trappings, Penny remarks, "That makes the case against Gargoyle bulletproof, doesn't it?"
    While the doctor hurries off to his room to do some more work on the motion-picture theory of crime detection and prevention, Penny searches the cellar for clues. And finds one, "a bit of metal formed into two cylinders," which she takes straightaway to Anthony. He identifies it as "a child's whistle, or a tuning pipe," and promptly records it on film.
    All sorts of other clues and things are also recorded on film, with Penny acting as "camera woman." Then, after Anthony has processed the film in his portable crime lab and morgue, all the suspects are gathered together in the drawing room. There they are shown film clips of the revolver and Maxim silencer, of the whistle, of the statue of the black cat; and filmed interviews with Gargoyle, with one of the Chinese servants, with Oswald, and finally with Zarzour. At the end of each interview, the interviewees are depicted stabbing the dummy with overhand downward thrusts. All except Zarzour, that is. He starts to stab the dummy with an underhand upward thrust and only at the last instant changes it to an overhand downward thrust.
    Zarzour, therefore, is the murderer.
    And it has been proven by the motion-picture theory of crime detection and prevention!
    For Jorgenson had been stabbed in the back with an underhand upward thrust, not an overhand downward thrust, and Zarzour is the only one present who stabs dummies (or people) that way. His motive? It seems that Zarzour was confined to an asylum in New York after having been convicted of some sort of heinous crime, and that Jorgenson had once sketched Zarzour as part of his series of murderer portraits. Zarzour was afraid that Jorgenson would recover from his amnesia and recognize him (in spite of the fact that, we subsequently learn, Zarzour has had plastic surgery, which altered his