Ellery Queen's Japanese Golden Dozen. Ellery Queen

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      The stolen cashbox gave some hints about the killer. It contained promissory notes from the people who had borrowed from Yamagishi, plus renewals for payment of interest and other promissory contracts. The murderer obviously knew both the contents and the location of the cashbox. His purpose had been to steal the promissory notes.

      Under a Buddhist shrine in the house, the detectives discovered 150,000 yen in cash. But nothing was disturbed; there was no trace of the killer's having tried to find it.

      Two days after the crime, the police had arrested Torao Ueki.

      One of the investigators learned that a Mr. Nakamura, while looking out of his bathroom window, had seen a man hurrying at a run down the street in the direction of Yamagishi's house. This man looked very much like the proprietor of a noodle shop near the train station.

      Torao Ueki had opened a noodle shop next to the train station three years earlier. About a year ago, he had purchased some of the neighboring land and expanded and remodeled his shop, not because business was on the upswing, but because he wanted to compete with a new noodle shop in the vicinity. He had hoped that by enlarging and improving his place he would attract more customers. He did not. The number of customers decreased. But to purchase the land and make renovations, he had borrowed money from Yamagishi at a high rate of interest.

      With the interest and the drop in business, Ueki was in a tight spot. But he had a hunch that, in a bit, the number of houses in the neighborhood would increase, causing a rise in daily commuters on the trains. His shop was in front of the station, an excellent location. He decided to stick it out. But Yamagishi's exorbitant interest payments were getting the better of him. He couldn't sit back calmly and wait for a brighter tomorrow. From the age of eighteen till twenty-five, he had worked in a secondhand bookshop in the center of town. The restaurant business was completely new to him.

      Ueki had suffered deeply because of his connection with Yamagishi. The moneylender was merciless in exacting his due. The note had been renewed a number of times, and the interest came to four times the original loan. When the murder took place, Ueki owed Yamagishi seven and a half million yen. Yamagishi felt that if the debt rose still more, Ueki would never be able to repay, so he would assume ownership of the land and shop, which had been put up as security. This disturbed Ueki terribly and had recently caused trouble. Ueki hated Yamagishi. He told certain persons that he would like to "kill that old man!"

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      There were many other people who hated Yamagishi enough to kill him. But to be a suspect, there had to be the lack of an alibi for the hour from nine till ten on the night of the crime. The suspect had to be known to the victim and have knowledge that the schoolteacher and his wife were out of town. He had to posses detailed knowledge concerning the layout of Yamagishi's house and the exact location of the cashbox. And, judging from the brutal wound on the back of the victim's head, he had to be quite strong.

      No fingerprints belonging to the killer were discovered. There were numerous other fingerprints, but they were smeared, except for some belonging to the couple upstairs. They, though, had the clear alibi of being in Kyushu at the time of the murder. The remaining prints probably were those of people who came to see Yamagishi on financial business. All the prints were old.

      The killer left no weapon behind. No suspicious footprints were found, and the entrance hall was floored with concrete, so such prints were unlikely. The pole that latched the front door was considered as a possible murder weapon, yet it seemed too lightweight, slender, to have caused the fatal wound. The only prints on it were Yamagishi's. Yamagishi had been almost completely bald, and had bled little. Neither blood nor hair would be found on the weapon.

      Under the eaves at the back of the house was a stack of pine logs, cut for fuel. Town gas had not yet been piped to the area. Most of the residents used bottled propane. Yamagishi, however, in his miserliness and accustomed to farmhouse ways, fired his cooking stove with wood. The pine logs had been carefully split into pieces with roughly triangular cross sections some four centimeters to a side. It seemed that several blows with such a log could cause the kind of wound that killed Yamagishi. Detectives checked the top ten of perhaps thirty bundles of firewood in the stack, but the rough surfaces made it difficult to trace prints. It was, in fact, next to impossible. There were no findings of blood or hair.

      With this information on the condition of the body and scene of the crime in his mind, Harajima read the report of the confession made by Ueki:

      "Must have been nearly two years ago, I got money from Jin Yamagishi. It was at a damned high rate of interest. Since that time, I suffered because of the debt. Just lately, he made a threat—said he'd auction off my shop and land; they were put up as security for the loan. Everything I had was used to buy the land and open the noodle shop. Later on, I borrowed money from Yamagishi to enlarge and improve my shop. But business didn't go so well. I thought it would be better. That and Yamagishi's crazy demands drove me to despair. Yes. I decided my wife and children, and I, would commit suicide together. But, by God, before I died, I wanted to kill that old man. It would at least be something for the sake of all the other people he brought to grief.

      "October 18, I was in the Manpaiso mahjong parlor, maybe two hundred meters from the train station. From ll!aybe seven in the evening, with friends—Nakada, Maeda, and Nishikawa—playing mahjong. Lately, seeing how we don't have many customers, I leave the shop to my wife in the evening, and play mahjong or kill the time one way or the other. We played maybe three games, I think, when Shibata came in and started watching. He comes to the mahjong parlor pretty often. He wanted to join the game. I said, 'Look, I've got to run home for something. Why don't you sit in for me?' It made him happy. I left the Manpaiso at maybe nine o'clock.

      "But I didn't go home. I went over to the phone booth in front of the station and called Yamagishi. After a time, he answered. I told him I wanted to talk about him taking my property. I told him I'd managed to get together two million yen and I'd bring it with me right now. I said maybe he could postpone his claim on the land and shop, we could talk. At first he was kind of angry, interrupting, saying he'd gone to bed. Then he smoothed out, changed his mind when I mentioned the money. 'Okay, c'mon over. I'm waiting.' He sounded even impatient.

      "It's about a half a mile to Yamagihsi's. After a bit there aren't many houses, only fields and two irrigation ponds. I didn't meet anybody. There are twelve or thirteen houses along by Yamagishi's. But Mr. Nakamura's house is off the street a ways, some distance. I had no idea he'd be able to see me from his toilet window. He eats at our noodle shop.

      "Just like he said he would, Yamagishi had opened the door. I knew the teacher and his woman had gone to Kyushu three or four days ago. The teacher eats at the shop. He told me himself.

      "Before I went to the door, I went around behind the house. I hunted around and found a chunk of wood from the pile I knew was there. Nobody was home upstairs, either—I made sure. All the windows were shuttered. No sign of light anywhere through the cracks.

      "So I went to the door. I stepped into the hallway and called to Yamagishi. He came to meet me. There was a light in the other room. I held the hunk of wood behind me. It was shadowy.

      "'You know, it's late,' he said. But he was grinning and didn't seem upset. He was sure as the devil thinking about the two million. 'It's okay, though,' he said. 'C'mon, in.'

      "I tried to stall, thinking about the piece of wood. I said something about being sorry to disturb him so late, and all. Told him I'd managed to get together two million yen. I didn't want to leave it home for fear of thieves.

      "'C'mon, c'mon,' he said, moving into the next room. He pulled two seat cushions from a stack in the corner and put them by a table. I kept the wood behind me as I stepped up СКАЧАТЬ