"Come in, come in!" Dr. Sam Hawthorne said. "Will you have the usual libation? Good! I promised to tell you about our centennial locked room this time, didn't I? Northmont in those days was a great place for celebrations. We'd already had a tercentennial in the summer of '27 to mark an early pilgrim settlement, and now in the summer of '32 we were marking the centennial of Northmont's incorporation as a village. It was a time of Depression, and a year of presidential election, and I suppose the town fathers thought a celebration was just what we needed . . ."

For most people (Dr. Sam continued), the high point of the centennial celebration was to be the opening of the Northmont Cinema, our very first talking-picture palace. It was like a step into the future for us, and far more important to most residents than the opening of Pilgrim Memorial Hospital had been a few years earlier. Mayor Trenton had already agreed to cut the ribbon on opening day, Wednesday, June 29th, as part of a week-long celebration climaxing with fireworks on July 4th, the following Monday.

I stopped by the Cinema on Tuesday, the day before the grand opening. The signs were already in place out front announcing the first double bill: Winner Take All with James Cagney and The Miracle Man with Chester Morris. Matt Creeley, the owner, was as excited as everyone else in town.

"Let me show you the place, Doc," he urged, taking me by the arm. "We can seat four hundred and thirty people in comfort. That's half the population of Northmont, and I figure we'll draw from as far away as Shinn Corners. They've got nothing like this!"

The auditorium was indeed impressive. "What's this little glassed-in room at the back?" I asked him.

"A soundproof room for families with babies or small children. Sort of a crying room, so they won't disturb the rest of the audience. The sound from the screen comes in through this speaker. There are only a few theaters in the country that have one of these." His voice was filled with pride.

"You've certainly done a fine job, Matt," I said, looking over the little room, which had a dozen seats. We went down the center aisle and I glanced back over my shoulder. "That's the projection booth up there?"

"Right. I'll be running the projectors sometimes, but Freddie Bay is going to be my official projectionist."

"Think you can keep him sober?" Freddie was the town character, drunk more often than sober even though Prohibition was still the law of the land.

"He's been pretty good lately, Doc. I been teaching him how to run the projector and he's really taking an interest in it."

"I'm glad to hear it," I told him. Freddie Bay rented a room over the barber shop on Main Street and I often saw him on my way to the office.

On the way out, a pretty dark-haired girl came up with a question for Creeley. He turned to me. "You know Vera Smith, don't you, Sam?"

"I don't believe I do." I'd heard he'd hired a ticket-seller from Shinn Corners, but no one had mentioned she was so attractive.

"Vera, this is Dr. Sam Hawthorne. You get a sprained wrist from taking in all that money, Doc's the one you call."

She gave me an appealing smile. "I hope that won't happen." "Do you live in town?" I asked as if I didn't know better.

"Shinn Corners. I drive over in my auto."

"This is a good job. You're in on the ground floor." "So Mr. Creeley keeps telling me," she replied.

"I still have to hire a couple of boys to be ushers," Creeley said, "but I'll do that this afternoon. I ran an ad in the paper this morning."

"I wish you the best of luck."

"Here are a couple of passes for opening night, Doc. Bring a girl friend."

"Thanks very much."

That summer there were no women in my life, so when I returned to the office I asked my nurse April if she'd like to accompany me. "Tomorrow night?" she asked. "When Mayor Trenton cuts the ribbon and everything?"

"That's right."

"I'd love it! But what would I wear? In the magazines they wear formal clothes to movie openings."

"Not in Northmont, we don't. That dress you wore to—"

The telephone interrupted us. It was Sheriff Lens and he sounded excited.

"Doc, you gotta come over here quick. I've got a body." "Where are you, Sheriff?"

"Up in Freddie Bay's apartment above the barber shop. He just committed suicide."

The apartment was dusty and sparsely furnished—the sort of place I'd have expected Freddie to live in. There was a half empty bottle of bootleg Scotch on the dining-room table. Freddie was sprawled in an easy chair nearby, a revolver on the floor beneath his right hand. "Shot himself in the head," Sheriff Lens muttered.

I inspected the bloody wound in his temple. "Powder burns. It looks like suicide all right, Sheriff."

"Woman across the hall heard the shot about an hour ago. She tried knocking on his door and when no one answered she telephoned me."

"I wonder why poor Freddie would kill himself."

"Oh, he left a suicide note, Doc. Damndest thing you ever saw!"

I took the shakily written note and read it quickly: I killed Mayor Trenton at the opening night of the Northmont Cinema. I hated him because he always had the cops after me for my drinking. I'd drilled a hole in the floor of the projection booth through the ceiling of the crying room. When the mayor went in to try it out, I made a noise so he looked up at the ceiling and I shot him between the eyes. I put putty in the hole so no one could see it, and nobody knew how he could have been shot while he was alone in that room. I could have gotten away with it, but my conscience wouldn't let me. I'm taking this way out. Freddie Bay.

"But—"

"Exactly, Doc. The opening isn't till tomorrow night, and Mayor Trenton is alive. Freddie confessed to a murder that hasn't been committed yet."

Freddie Bay's suicide note was put down to the ramblings of an alcoholic, and Mayor Trenton dismissed it with a laugh. "Maybe he was planning to kill me and he got so drunk he thought he'd done it."

Sheriff Lens and I personally inspected the floor of the projection booth and the ceiling of the room below without finding any indication of a hole. If Freddie had been serious about his plan, he hadn't yet carried out the crucial first step.

"What am I going to do without a projectionist?" Matt Creeley fumed, running a hand through his thinning hair. "I'll have to run the projectors myself when I should be down here greeting people." "It'll work out," Sheriff Lens assured him.

"And what if the mayor is scared off and doesn't show up to cut the ribbon?"

"Nothing's ever scared off Ernie Trenton," Lens assured him. "And why should this? The would-be killer is already dead."

But as we were leaving the theater, I asked the sheriff: "You're going to be here for the opening, aren't you?"

"I sure am, but not because of this business. The wife and I just want to see a couple of good moving pictures, right here in town." He squinted at me. "You're not worried, are you?"

"Not really."

"Then what is it, Doc? I can tell when something's not right with you."

"I was just thinking about that half empty bottle of bootleg Scotch. You know how Freddie liked to drink. If he was going to kill himself, don't you think he'd have finished off the bottle first?"

"Maybe," Sheriff Lens admitted. "But if somebody killed him and is planning to kill the mayor, they wouldn't be dumb enough to leave that suicide note and warn us about it."

"I don't know," I admitted. "I don't know what to think."

The afternoon of the opening was bright with sunshine, a warm summer's day that seemed made for a celebration. The whole town square had been decorated for the centennial, and Mayor Trenton wasn't the only politician taking advantage of it. I spotted Casper Drake, a town selectman and political foe of Trenton's, shaking a few hands.

He saw me and called out, "Doc Hawthorne! Wait up a minute!"

"How are you, Casper?" He was a thin man with an ulcer problem I'd been treating off and on over the years.

"Good as can be expected. Tell me, what's this about Freddie Bay shooting himself?"

"That seems to be what happened. He left a suicide note."

"Seems mighty strange. Creeley had just given him a job at his new theater."

"I know." I was reluctant to add anything else, hoping the contents of the note hadn't yet become general knowledge.

"Are you going to the opening tonight?"

"I wouldn't miss it. I'll see you there, Casper."

April was ready when I picked her up in my Stutz Torpedo a little after seven o'clock, and at that time of the year there was still plenty of daylight as we drove around the square and parked near the new theater. Even though the Fourth of July was five days off, there were kids with firecrackers and cap pistols celebrating early over by the bandstand. Somehow it added a festive air to the evening's activities, and though I saw Sheriff Lens standing at the curb glaring at them he made no effort to interfere with their play.

"Good to see you Doc—April," he said as we left the car.

"Is your wife here, Sheriff?" April asked.

"She's inside, saving a couple of seats. I figured I should be out here when the mayor makes it official."

Since the opening-night audience was made up of invited guests, Vera Smith didn't need to be in the box office. Instead, she stood beside Matt Creeley in the doorway, accepting passes from people as they went in. When Creeley spotted Mayor Trenton out front, he called a temporary halt to admissions and we all gathered around while a symbolic red ribbon was stretched across the entrance.

"Friends and fellow townspeople," the beefy mayor began, as if he were campaigning for re-election, "it's a pleasure to be here this evening for one of the banner events of this centennial summer—the grand opening of the Northmont Cinema, our very first motion-picture theater." He lifted the scissors and snipped the ribbon as the crowd cheered.

We all filed inside after him and I noticed Casper Drake lean over to whisper something to Vera Smith as he passed. Whatever it was, she blushed and smiled. April and I found aisle seats about halfway back, waving to the sheriff's wife at the other end of the same row. Sheriff Lens himself appeared after a moment, catching me by the elbow.

"Doc, I got a problem. Mayor Trenton wants to watch the first half of the movie from the crying room."

I had to smile. "You're not superstitious, are you, Sheriff? We went over that room and there are no holes in the ceiling. Besides, whether Freddie's confession was serious or not, the man is dead."

He shook his head. "I just don't like it, tempting fate like that."

"I'll go back and talk to him," I told him. April promised to save my seat, but she was so excited watching the crowd I wasn't going to count on it.

Trenton was standing with Matt Creeley and Casper Drake, admiring the theater's interior. Matt was the first one to tell me, "Doc, if the mayor really wants to watch the movie from the crying room, I wonder if you could sit with him.

I have to be up in the projection booth running the film, and I'd feel better if the sheriff kept a watch on the door from outside."

"I think you're all being foolish," Trenton said, and I had to agree with him. "I only want to sit there for five or ten minutes to get the feel of the room. Then I'll come out and join the rest of you." It crossed my mind that he might be playing to the women's vote, though there were no young families invited to test the room on opening night.

"I'll sit with you for that long," I agreed. "Let's go."

Matt Creeley, smiling at last, motioned to Vera. "Tell the ushers to stand in the back during the show. I don't want their heads blocking the screen."

We entered the glass-fronted room and took seats in the first row. The soundproof paneling gave my ears an eerie feeling and I started out talking in a whisper until I remembered we couldn't be heard outside. "Nice thick

glass," I said. "It must have cost Creeley a chunk."

Mayor Trenton nodded. "Boston's got nothing on us."

"Where's your wife tonight?" I asked, making conversation. Hilda Trenton was a pleasant middle-aged woman who usually accompanied the mayor to civic events.

"I expected her here before this. She had to visit her mother in Shinn

Corners this afternoon."

"Shinn Corners. That's where Vera, the ticket-seller, is from."

Trenton grunted. "I thought she looked familiar. Maybe I've seen her over there."

The house lights dimmed and the fancy red curtains parted. The audience applauded as the first black-and-white images appeared on the screen. Above our heads, music flowed through a corner speaker. I saw Sheriff Lens glance in at us through the window and wave. "These are good seats," I said to the mayor. "Creeley should probably put carpeting on the floor, though."

Trenton grunted, his eyes on the screen.

The second feature was shown first. It was the story of a gang of crooks reformed by a faith healer. Mayor Trenton seemed to know there'd been a previous silent version with Lon Chaney. After less than ten minutes, he showed impatience and suggested we move out with the rest of the audience. "I should take a look around for Hilda. She's probably here by now."

On the screen one of the characters had drawn a gun. Trenton was just starting to rise when I heard a muffled crack, like a shot fired some distance away. I thought it was on the screen, but beside me the mayor gasped. "Oh, my God! I've been shot!" He toppled back into his seat and I saw him grasp at the fleshy part of his chest below the left shoulder. "Let me see," I said, pulling away his coat. There was blood on his shirt, and a hole where the bullet had entered.

Just then the door opened and Sheriff Lens poked his head in. "Mayor, your wife just arrived. Should I bring her in here?"

"He's been shot!" I shouted. "Get help!"

"Shot? How could he be? He was alone in here with you, Doc. I've been outside the door all the time."

"Maybe Freddie Bay did it," I muttered. "Just get the lights on so I can see what I'm doing here."

Hilda Trenton was close to hysteria after hearing the news. "Is he going to die? I want to see him! I want to be with him!"

"You can see him," I told her. "We're going to take him to the hospital, but he'll be all right. Luckily, he was starting to rise just as the shot was fired. Otherwise it might have struck the side of his head."

"But how—?"

Sheriff Lens was helping the mayor to his feet. The film had stopped and the house lights were turned on. I knew an ambulance would be on its way from Pilgrim Memorial Hospital. "Just take it easy, Mayor," I cautioned. "It looks like a flesh wound to me, but we can't be sure yet."

His face had gone white and I feared he might be going into shock. I hoped the ambulance wouldn't take too long. Casper Drake appeared from the audience, trying to get through to us. "What happened? Is he dead?"

"He's very much alive, Casper. Keep everyone back, will you?"

Finally the ambulance arrived and we persuaded Mayor Trenton to lie down on a stretcher. His color was better and though I figured there would probably be no complications, I rode along with him. I told Sheriff Lens, "Check that ceiling again. Look for a hole big enough to admit a bullet.

And the walls, too. Those acoustical panels—"

"I'll take care of it, Doc."

Hilda Trenton insisted on riding in the ambulance, and by the time we reached Pilgrim Memorial she was in worse shape than her husband. The staff doctors had been alerted and Trenton was immediately wheeled into the operating room. I scrubbed, put on a mask and gown, and followed along.

The whole thing took only fifteen minutes. Extricating the bullet, Dr. Lask held it up for me to see. "It went in only about an inch," he said. "Either it was fired from a great distance away or it passed through something that slowed its velocity."

"Could it have killed him?"

"Sure, depending on where it hit. He was lucky." He bent back over his work. "A few stitches and he'll be as good as new."

"Hang onto that bullet," I told him. "The sheriff will want it."

I left the operating room and returned to Hilda Trenton, waiting outside.

"Tell me the worst, Dr. Sam," she said. "Is he dead?"

"Hilda, he'll be fine. It's little more than a scratch."

"But someone shot him!"

"Yes."

"Who would do a thing like that?"

"Any politician makes enemies," I answered, thinking about Freddie Bay.

"Then they might try again, even here in the hospital."

"I'm sure Sheriff Lens will have a deputy guarding his door, Hilda."

I told the sheriff about Hilda Trenton's fears and he explained that he had already ordered a guard for the mayor.

I told him Dr. Lask's comment that it might have been fired through something that slowed its velocity. "The sound of the shot was muffled," I confirmed.

"Like a silencer?"

"I've only heard them in movies, but those are usually more like a cough, or a hiss of air. This was a sharp sound, like a shot, but just not very loud. Of course, the acoustical panels might have affected it."

Sheriff Lens shook his head. "It doesn't make a great deal of difference, Doc. There's no bullet hole in the window or the walls—or the ceiling. And none of the holes in those soundproof tiles are big enough for a bullet. The door may not have been locked like in your classic locked-room mysteries, but it was the next best thing. I was standin' right outside and you were inside. Nobody entered, and the bullet couldn't have entered either. It's impossible, Doc."

"Nothing's impossible if you think about it long enough. Suppose Freddie Bay told the truth about wanting to kill Trenton, but merely lied about the method. Suppose he had some sort of trap set in the crying room well in advance—a gun hidden in one of the seats, or even in that wall speaker, set to go off at a certain time."

"I don't know, Doc—"

"Let's go look."

The shooting of Mayor Trenton had so upset Matt Creeley he had cancelled the rest of the show. He was pacing the empty lobby when we arrived, still looking distraught. "Casper Drake says you had a warning this might happen," he said, confronting us. "Is that true?"

"Well, not exactly," Sheriff Lens replied. "We thought the threat was over."

"This was my big opening and you ruined it for me."

"We didn't ruin it," I reminded him. "The would-be killer did that."

I followed the sheriff into the auditorium where he'd left a deputy on guard by the crying-room door. "It's just as we left it," he told me. "I

checked the walls and ceiling but I didn't touch anything."

I could see that. A blood-soaked handkerchief was still on the floor by Trenton's seat along with the navy-blue suitcoat I'd peeled off him after the shooting. Luckily, there wasn't much damage to it—only a spot or two of blood on the inner lining. "You can get this jacket back to the mayor," I said. "Is there any chance one of those acoustical panels might move or conceal a tiny door?"

"None, Doc. I tried them all. And I even checked the projection room upstairs."

I got a stepladder and inspected the wall speaker myself. There was no gun inside. Next I felt the upholstery in all the seats—with the same result. The floor of the new theater was virtually spotless. I picked up a tiny piece of red paper, smaller than a toenail, but found nothing else. "A dead end, Sheriff," I decided.

"You're stumped?"

"Maybe. Tell me something. How did Casper Drake know the contents of

Freddie's suicide note? He told Creeley there'd been a warning."

"Mayor Trenton mentioned it at a meeting this afternoon. Said he felt like

Lincoln going off to the theater tonight."

"Do you think Casper knows something about this business?"

Sheriff Lens waved a hand. "I doubt it. He's more interested in the news from Chicago."

"Chicago?" I'd almost forgotten that the Democratic Convention was in its final day there. New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt had won the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot and had surprised everyone by flying there to deliver his acceptance speech.

"Roosevelt came out for Repeal in his speech, just like Hoover did two weeks ago. Prohibition is dead, no matter who gets elected."

"How does that affect Casper?"

"Well, I wouldn't want to say—"

"Sheriff, one man is dead and another came close to it tonight. If Casper is involved—"

Sheriff Lens was uncomfortable. "It's just a little side deal I heard about, Doc. There's probably no connection with the shooting tonight. See, if Prohibition is repealed next year, anyone with a big stock of imported liquor will be sitting pretty."

"A bootlegger, you mean?"

"Or someone who imported it legally, using government licenses obtained for medicinal use. I hear tell there's a new drug company doin' just that over in Shinn Corners."

"Shinn Corners?" The place kept popping up. "Is Casper involved with it?"

"Well, that's what I can't prove, Doc, but you don't get those government licenses unless you've got some political pull. The word I have is that there's a warehouse in Shinn Corners stocked to the roof with Scotch whisky, just waiting for Repeal. The drug company has Pinkertons guarding it."

We moved back into the lobby, where Vera Smith had joined Creeley. "I'll be heading home if you don't have anything else for me to do," she said.

"Go ahead," the theater owner answered glumly. "Maybe tomorrow will be better."

"Wait a minute, Vera," I called. "I'll walk you to your car."

She got out her keys as we strolled. "Is Mayor Trenton going to be all right?"

"I think so. Luckily, he was starting to stand up just as the shot was fired." "But who could have done it? And how?"

"We're trying to get to the bottom of it," I said. "You live in Shinn

Corners, don't you?"

"That's right."

"I saw you talking earlier to Casper Drake. Do you ever see him around town?"

"Sure, that's how I know him. I see him sometimes in the bank there, or doing some shopping."

"Does he have any business interests there?"

She looked doubtful. "I don't know about that."

I held the door while she climbed behind the wheel of her Ford. "You might ask around town, see if he's connected with a business there." "All right, if you want." But somehow I didn't think she would.

I watched her drive off and then went back inside. The sheriff was affixing a seal to the crying-room door. "Keep people out for a couple of days," he said, "We'll look at it again tomorrow."

"Got any ideas, Sheriff?"

He looked at me and shook his head. "Hell, Doc, we know who did it.

Trouble is, he killed himself yesterday."

I'd been concerned about Mayor Trenton's safety, and so I was relieved to find him out of bed and preparing to go home the next morning. "Thanks for sending over my jacket," he said. "At least I can walk out of here with a bit more dignity than when I came in last night."

"How's the shoulder?"

"Dr. Lask says to come back in ten days and he'll remove the stitches. There might be a little seepage of blood for a day or two, he says, but otherwise I'm fine."

Hilda Trenton arrived, smiling and gracious. She'd recovered her composure and was once again the mayor's wife. "Has the sheriff captured the gunman yet?" she wondered.

"He's got a couple of good leads," I lied. Then I added, with a grain of truth, "He's checking something over in Shinn Corners."

Trenton was a bit wobbly from loss of blood, but we got him to the car without difficulty. The deputy followed along, with instructions to remain with the mayor at least through the holiday weekend. Another deputy would be assigned to night duty at their house.

I found Sheriff Lens in the town square, pretending to chase after the kids with their fireworks and cap pistols. "Let them go, Sheriff," I called to him. "There's no law against it."

"They litter up the grass," he complained, stooping to retrieve the remains of a cherry bomb that had just exploded with a deafening blast.

"Mayor Trenton is back home."

"Good." His face took on its familiar perplexed look. "Doc, I was examinin' that bullet they dug out of the mayor's shoulder. All I got's a magnifying glass but the size of the slug and the markings on it look awfully similar to the bullet that killed Freddie Bay."

"Oh?"

"And that gun's been locked in the office safe since Tuesday."

"I see what you mean."

"An impossible shooting in a locked room with a gun that's in my safe!"

"Think you could find me that warehouse in Shinn Corners?"

"Huh?"

"The place with the Scotch whisky."

"I don't know. Maybe. Not too many warehouses over there."

"Then let's go."

"What for? What are you gonna find there, Doc?"

"The last piece of the puzzle. I want to know if that brand of Scotch is the same as the bottle we found in Freddie Bay's apartment."

He stared at me for a moment and then said, "Let's go."

On the drive over, I sorted it all out in my mind until I was sure I knew what had happened. It made sense in a crazy way.

We both knew Sheriff Lens was out of his jurisdiction in Shinn Corners, but he wasn't there to arrest anybody. He located the warehouse of the Pilgrim Drug Company without too much difficulty and talked his way past the Pinkerton guards by announcing that I was a doctor come to check on their stock of medicinal whisky.

"I guess it's all right to go in," the guard finally said. "The boss is in there."

"That's just the man we wanted to see," I told him.

He led us down an aisle, past cases of Scotch with the brand name I'd expected. There was a small lighted office at the far end of the building, and as we approached a man came out I didn't know. He frowned and started walking toward us.

"Get out your gun, Sheriff," I whispered.

Behind the stranger, following him out of the office, was Mayor Trenton.

We stood facing each other in an instant of surprise, then Trenton barked a command to the other man. "Shoot them! They're hijackers!"

But Sheriff Lens had reached for his badge instead of his gun. "Now what do you want to say something like that for, Mayor? Call off your Pinkerton boys. I think Doctor Sam here wants to say a few words."

"I do." I stepped forward a bit, facing Mayor Trenton in the narrow aisle. "You almost fooled us, I'll admit. You managed to switch victim and killer most convincingly. Freddie Bay became the killer and you became the victim, when in truth the exact opposite was the case all the time. Freddie knew about your connection with this place, and with Repeal becoming a real possibility for the first time he probably decided to try a little blackmail. You killed him and faked that suicide note in his shaky handwriting after getting him drunk on a bottle of Scotch you'd brought along. You should have poured the rest of it down the drain. That half empty bottle was the first thing to make me suspicious."

"You seem to forget I was shot myself," Trenton said. "I'll have your badge for this, Lens."

The sheriff kept quiet and let me do the talking. "Your shooting was the most bizarre touch. I figured out how you did it, but I can only guess at the reason why. You were afraid Bay had left something—a letter accusing you of using political connections to gain permits for importing Scotch into the country for medicinal purposes. If that letter surfaced after his death, it would make you a prime suspect in his murder as well. How could you kill the blackmailer and still be safe? Simply by faking another letter, making it seem as if he planned to kill you and drunkenly thought he'd already carried out his scheme. Then if the real letter turned up it could be dismissed as more drunken ramblings."

"You were right next to me when I was shot," Mayor Trenton reminded me.

"That so-called shooting took a lot of nerve on your part. Just before coming to the theater, you had to stab yourself with something like an icepick in the fleshy part of the shoulder, deep enough so you could work an already-fired bullet into the wound. I hope you sterilized the slug to prevent blood-poisoning. You stuffed a handkerchief against the wound to keep it closed and absorb the blood, and left for the theater. You probably figured that a real shooting, following Freddie's strange confession, would so baffle us that we'd never implicate you in his killing, even if the blackmail letter showed up. But we should have realized from the start that the whole socalled shooting was predicated upon your insistence on watching part of the film from that soundproof room. No would-be killer is likely to have guessed you'd do that, so the crime couldn't have been planned—by Bay or anyone else. Only you could have set it up, Mayor."

"You were seated next to me. You heard the shot."

"I heard an explosive cap, the kind used in a child's cap pistol, dropped by you on the bare floor earlier. As you started to rise, you brought your heel down hard on the cap, setting it off. It was just loud enough to be mistaken for a muffled shot. The burnt cap probably stuck to your shoe, but I did find a tiny red piece of it on the floor. When the cap went off, you pulled the bloody handkerchief free, dropped it on the floor where we found it, and let the blood flow. You'd thought to cut a hole in your shirt where the bullet apparently entered, but you couldn't have a matching hole in your suit jacket where it would be seen. That undamaged jacket gave you away, when I started thinking about it. And today, when I mentioned a clue relating to Shinn Corners, you had to sneak past the deputy assigned to

guard you and get over here to see that everything was all right."

"I'm getting out of here," Trenton growled. He turned and ran down a narrow aisle before we realized what was happening.

"Come on!" the sheriff shouted to me, running after him.

We were halfway down the aisle in pursuit before I realized it was a trap. Trenton was pushing on a pile of whisky cases, trying to topple them over onto us. He was a mighty ingenious man . . .

"Well," Dr. Sam Hawthorne concluded, "I'm still here so you know I wasn't killed. Neither was Sheriff Lens. The cases fell the wrong way and Mayor Trenton was crushed beneath them. He was dead when we pulled him out. He must have been a little mad those last days to come up with that farfetched scheme and actually wound himself and insert that bullet. We never did tell the town the true story. Bay and Trenton were both gone, and we let it stand as a suicide and a tragic accident. If people wondered what their mayor was doing in a warehouse full of Scotch whisky, they talked about it only in private."

"We hadn't heard the last of that warehouse, though. Government agents came to confiscate the Scotch, and the bootleggers moved in to grab it first. Before our centennial summer ended, it caused another murder that seemed just as impossible as the attack on Mayor Trenton."