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Show Cause 0 For Murder LIL.J By Richard H. Wilkinson J NDREW RANDALL'S death was, "obviously, suicide. Capt. Van Ness of the homicide squad went down to investigate, though he admitted ad-mitted the investigation was merely in the line of routine duty. I went with him. "You can't make a murder out of this one," I grumbled. "Come on . . home. We're wast- . i"S each others O-Minute time. t5 Fiction "Keep your shirt I on, scribe. Let's look around the joint. I've always wanted to see what a millionaire's home looked like." "You're still wasting time. Randall Ran-dall was just $999,999 short of being a millionaire." This was tru';. Once a prominent member of the upper brackets, Andrew An-drew Randall's fortune had depleted steadily for the past dozen years. Even the house was mortgaged. "Who's going to inherit this bunch of debts?" I asked Van. "As far as I can figure there's only one living relative. A youngster named Barry Roister. Rois-ter. A nephew by marriage. He lives in Michigan." "Ah!" I cried brightly. "A murder mur-der prospect! Now what could the motive be?" Van grinned again. The drawing room of the old house contained three fairly good oil paintings. There were some silver and a few antique pieces and a car in the garage. Otherwise, young Mr. Barry Roister of Michigan was going to find it hardly worth his while to make the trip to New York to collect his inheritance. Outside, Van sighed deeply. "What a pity! There was a chance for a swell murder case and it turns out to be nothing but an ordinary suicide." "Lord, it's getting so a man can't honestly kill himself these days without some inquisitive copper trying try-ing to dramatize it. 1 was sent up to Provincetown and then down to Miami to cover the air races. So it was more than two weeks before I returned to New York. The day after my arrival I dropped in on Van. He looked brighter and satisfied. "About the Randall murder," he said. "We've got the killer!" I stared blankly. Then suddenly I remembered. "That wasn't a murder. mur-der. It was a suicide. What do you mean you've got the killer?" "Barry Roister from Michigan. Michi-gan. Remember? The nephew by marriage. He did it." "Now look, Van," I said. "Stop talking in bunches. Why would Barry Roister want to kill penniless old Andy Randall? "Because of the paintings. You remember re-member those three paintings we saw in the drawing room?" "I remember that they weren't anything to kill an old man over." "Ha!" said Van. "You newspaper men! Never get behind the news. Too superficial. I suppose you never heard of Caleb Trask?" "No, I never heard of Caleb Trask." "Well, he's an artist. Pretty good too. He painted thifte oils. They sold for about $50 each. Then Caleb died. So what always happens when a fairly good artist dies? The price of his paintings hits the sky. So Caleb Trask lived in Michigan and I stared blankly. "That wasn't a murder. It was a suicide. What do you mean you've got the killer?" Roister, being an art connoisseur and knowing that his distant uncle owned the paintings, began to think. "Ah!" "Ah! is right. To Roister it looked like a set-up. Uncle Andy had every reason to commit suicide and who would ever suspect a distant nephew neph-ew living in Michigan who would only inherit a bunch of debts? "So Roister made a quick and murderous trip to Uncle Andy's and then returned to Michigan. And when he was advised he had in-, herited a lot of debts he came back and gave his uncle a decent burial and took the paintings and left everything else for the debts. And a week ar.d a half later I read in the papers where the Trask oils had sold for $50,000 each." Van sighed and grinned. "What a pity you newspaper men don't try to get behind be-hind the news." "What a pity." I snapped, "that you had to read in the newspapers about the paintings being sold." |