Captain Tucker broke the gun. “Two,” he said. “What does this mean, Doctor?”
“It means you have your kidnaper.”
And so it came that Ira Close, snarling and venomous, sat handcuffed in Captain Tucker’s police car.
“Where’s the boy, Doctor?”
“In the barn, most likely. Not a bad idea, was it? Snatch the boy and hide him away three hundred feet from his home. Who’d think of looking for him there? Why should anybody look for him there when the hue and cry had gone out for an organ-grinder who had disappeared after trying to disguise himself?
“Why did Ira do it? You’ll have to ask him. The papers have been full of kidnapings and ransoms. Probably, with a greed for money, he’d been turning the thing in his mind for a long time. Then came the organ-grinder, and that brought inspiration. But there was one point, Tucker, you failed to take into account, and that was why I was not surprised to learn the Italian had boarded the train alone. A man, fleeing after a crime, does not shave off his mustache and leave the clipped hairs behind him to advertise his disguise.
“Ira snapped Billy up yesterday afternoon. The boy had never liked him; there was a momentary struggle. The signs of it lay upon the ground. Probably he hid the boy in the barn loft and gagged him. With the coming of night there was alarm in the Foster home. ‘Ira, go see if you can find Billy!’ He had anticipated that command. And so he went forth, and managed to run a noose up his arms, and came back with the note and a cock-and-bull story. He was loosely tied. Did you ever see a captive who was not tied tightly? For this Italian to tie Ira, a taller man, he would have to put away his gun. Can you picture 185-pound Ira allowing a 135-pound stripling, no longer flourishing a pistol, to wind him with a rope? It didn’t hold together.
“Nor was that the only point where the story didn’t hold together. Ira made positive identification of the organ-grinder. He identified him through a foreign accent. But he said nothing of a previous meeting until Joe told of seeing them in conversation. Where had that conversation been held? Outside the bank. Not significant in itself, but strikingly significant when we find Ira suddenly announcing to Foster that he had drawn three hundred dollars from the bank to send to his sister and that it had been stolen from his pocket.
“What’s your guess about that three hundred dollars, Tucker? Mine is that it went to the organ-grinder. The Italian is guilty of no wrong. All he knows is that a stranger offered him three hundred dollars to shave off his mustache, abandon his organ and monkey, disappear quietly and leave the train before reaching the station for which he had purchased a ticket. Why did Ira tell us about the three hundred dollars? What’s your guess, Tucker? Mine is that he was suddenly touched with a cold fear. The withdrawal of the money was a matter of record at the bank. The money was taken out the day of the kidnaping, the day of the organ-grinder’s disappearance. These facts might have given rise to a few unpleasant questions.”
Joe, breathless, looked at Captain Tucker. The policeman frowned doubtfully.