Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “Looks like we’re maybe on the right track, huh?” He looked at nurse Chesley and smiled.

  “You got a smart patient, there,” he said.

  “He described Foley exactly,” she replied.

  “Yeh?”

  “When you were out getting the picture, he told me how the murderer would look,” the nurse explained, “and he was right.”

  Professor Wright beamed. Hennessey walked over to him and leaned against the bed.

  “Now, tell me,” he said confidentially, “how’d you do it this time?”

  “Endocrinology again,” Professor Wright explained. “It’s very simple. The glandular indications in this case are fairly obvious. This Foley is a perfect specimen of the thymocentric—that’s a person with an overfunctioning thymus gland. Ordinarily this thymus gland, which is situated near the heart, stops functioning when a person is about 17 years old. But, if it continues to function, it produces a criminal who retains certain childish faults—often dangerous faults. The sending of the telegram was impertinent and childish. Having himself photographed with leading criminologists, and devising such an infantile murder device as a poison needle! That’s the sort of thing a child remembers from reading penny-thriller detective stories. Do you follow me?”

  “Well, yes, that last part I get,” Hennessey said slowly, “but I never could understamd all that gab about how the ductless glands secrete juices that make a guy either a saint or a sinner. I know a lot about a lot of things, but I still don’t know nothing about them ductless glands. And you been giving me the dope on them for three years now.” He paused to take a long drag on his cigarette and then he said, “On the level, professor, can you really figure this stuff out by glands?”

  “There is no other way.”

  “Well, you been doing all right with it.”

  “MOST criminals are usually hyphenated,” Wright continued, “that is, they have combinations of endocrine gland disturbances. This electrician, Foley, was also a subparathyroid—that is, his parathyroid gland was not functioning as it should and secreted an insufficiency of parathyroid fluid.”

  “But how could you tell he was a subpara . . . whatever you said,” Hennessey insisted.

  “You said the murder was committed in the dark. That is typical of the subparathyroid.”

  “O.K. if you say so, but how could you tell from that what the guy looked like.”

  “There are certain physical conditions which occur when the parathyroid is not functioning as it should. Foley’s bad teeth, and especially the fact they were widely spaced, plus the lopsided appearance of his face, plus his pinched expression—all these things are present in a subparathyroid murderer.”

  Nurse Chesley moved closer to the foot of the bed.

  “You mentioned, Professor Wright,” she said, “that the man would be bald. Is that part of a subparathyroid deficiency, too?”

  “No, that belongs to the thymocentric. But Foley is a combination, you see.”

  There was a faint whirr of the telephone bell and nurse Chesley answered it. She handed the phone to Hennessey. After listening for about five minutes, he hung up and turned to the professor.

  “You win again. That was Brooks. He didn’t have nothing on Foley himself, but it seems Foley’s brother killed a Gold-coast millionaire in a hold-up about two years ago and Lester Gould was hired to find him. So, of course he did and Foley’s brother was burned in the chair.”

  “Then the motive was revenge,” Wright said.

  “Guess it must be.” Hennessey grinned. He pulled a cigarette from his pack. “Well, I better be getting along before Foley confesses and someone else gets the credit.”

  “He won’t confess orally,” the invalid assured him. “Thymocentric-subparathyroids seldom do. They aren’t the type, you know. But he’ll have written a diary or he’ll write a long dissertation on the perfect crime.”

  “Swell. Then I’ll have time for a coke.” Hennessey lumbered out puffing vigorously at the cigarette. The invalid closed his eyes and here was a faint smile of happiness about his lips.

  “I’ll have my medicine now, nurse Chesley,” he said.

  THE END

  RED BLOOD AND GREEN SOAP

  Dale Clark

  You can expect blood to come from a wound, but green soap isn’t quite so bio . . . logical.

  “Dead,” the little doctor said. He got up from beside the body. He stared at Hanley’s blue-clad height, and his words came cold with contempt. “You damned flatfoot. Putting on a tourniquet like that. You’re a blundering, murderous fool. They ought to strip that badge off your chest, and I intend to see to it they do.”

  A cop had to render first aid; he’d be legally liable if he didn’t. So ran the state law. Jed Hanley was of the motorcycle traffic division, he’d been specially trained to handle accident cases, and there was no earthly excuse for the badly tied tourniquet that had come loose and let John Graham bleed to death.

  “I don’t understand it,” mumbled Hanley. “Yes, it’s obvious you didn’t understand what you were doing!” snapped little Dr. Wrenn.

  “I mean, how it could’ve come loose,” said Hanley thickly. The flashlight in his fist spilled a white circle onto the corpse. TK 9-15 said the motor grease daubed across Graham’s forehead, telling the time Hanley had applied the tourniquet. Good first aid, that precaution. A lap robe from the wrecked car partly covered the portly, middle-aged form. That was more good first aid—keeping the victim warm.

  Hanley had done a neat job of it, in all respects save one. His tourniquet, improvised from his necktie and pencil, had come loose. John Graham, never recovering consciousness from a fractured skull, had quietly and quickly bled to death through the gash in his wrist.

  Dr. Wrenn said, “You didn’t tie a square knot. That’s why it slipped.”

  He picked his way along the canyon to the other man. Two attendants from the Emergency Station were lifting Arnold Keet onto their stretcher. Keet was a big man. He groaned, breathing gustily through gritted teeth. “My head. Ai, God, be careful.”

  Keet’s eyes were dazed, with the dilated pupils that indicate head injury; he was pale, with the pallor and lowered pulse that symptomize shock.

  Headlights were pulling to a halt on the road above. Officers Bain and Carter, of the Accident Investigation Detail, came scrambling down the steep, stony, brush-grown slope.

  “This isn’t on your beat, is it?” Bain questioned.

  Hanley shook his head, glum. “I was patrolling the Boulevard extension, keeping traffic down to thirty-five miles an hour. I just happened to see headlights coming down the hill. One lamp smashed when they hit the fence, and the other went bouncing and bumping into the canyon.”

  “You got here first, then?” Carter asked. “Yes. Siren and throttle wide open. It didn’t take me over a minute and a half.”

  The crash squad men turned to the wreck. Graham’s convertible had plowed and plunged for thirty yards before fetching up on its right side against a giant boulder. A reek of gasoline blanketed the machine with oppressive, choking fumes.

  Hanley’s voice was tired. Hanley was no rookie. He’d been six years a patrolman before he got his transfer to the motorcycle squad. More than a year ago he’d taken the examination and qualified himself for promotion to the Accident Detail. Hanley had a wife and two kids to provide for; he was no storybook hero at all, but just a good, decent, squareshooting cop. He knew now he wouldn’t get the promotion, and he’d be lucky if he didn’t lose his badge as Dr. Wrenn had threatened.

  Hanley said in his tired voice, “They were both in it, and both unconscious. I got Graham out first. He’d managed to shut off the motor on the way down, but I figured a shorted wire might blow the whole mess to kingdom come. So I put on the tourniquet fast, because Keet was still under there, wedged between the car and the rock.”

  Little Dr. Wrenn was at his elbow. “That’s no excuse! It doesn’t take a split second longer to tie a square knot than a slipshod mak
eshift, if a man knows his business.”

  “Yeah,” admitted Hanley, feeling a cold heaviness in the middle of him. He didn’t see how, but in his frenzy of haste he must have failed to knot the tourniquet properly. A human life thrown away in a moment of negligence.

  Bain was writing in his notebook. “You paid no more attention to Graham after that?”

  “I found a laprobe in the car, and I put that over him. Then I had to run up and stop a passing car. There was just a woman in it, alone, but at least I could send her for help.”

  “Her name?”

  “I didn’t take the name. I just waved her on.”

  “Paula Chanin,” Dr. Wrenn said. “She called me, after she notified the Emergency Station.”

  “Gar Chanin’s wife,” mused Bain. “Wonder what she was doing out here, alone. Well, go on.”

  Hanley said, “I hurried back to Keet. He was senseless, and I couldn’t tell how bad he was hurt. It might have been a fractured neck or back or pelvis. Rough handling might be fatal, and I got him out of there by inches, as gently as I could.”

  “But how’d it happen?” Bain puzzled. “There weren’t any skidmarks up on the road.”

  “I found this doodad.” Hanley pointed his flashlight into the wreck. “That glass ball on the gear shift under the wheel. It’s new. Graham had just put it on.”

  “How do you know?” Carter demanded.

  “I found a small price tag gummed on it. A fresh tag, not soiled as it’d have been if he’d used it even a few days. I suppose he put it on today, and screwed it on too tight. It’s split almost in half, you notice. Well,” said Hanley, “it’s a fairly steep hill above here and Graham must have decided to shift into second to save wear and tear on his tires and brakes. But when he went to shift, the already cracked knob came apart in his hand. Naturally, he was thrown off stride. He looked down, took his eyes off the road a second or so, and crashed through the fence.”

  Bain nodded. “Yeah, it’s funny. Manufacturers pour millions of dollars into safety features. And then people turn around and install some damned accessory like that, a cut-price article that’s never been tested at all.”

  Hanley said, “It was a fatal mistake for Graham. When he saw what was happening he made a wild grab for the ignition. The broken glass—it’s as sharp as the devil—stuck out under the wheel at just the right angle to slash his wrist to the bone.”

  Dr. Wrenn huffed, “You’re avoiding the main issue. No matter how it happened, John Graham’s death was unnecessary. He was killed by your gross, blundering incompetence. I happen to know that a police officer can be prosecuted for not using due prudence and precaution under such circumstances. Graham was a friend of mine—and I don’t intend to let this matter drop.”

  In total silence, Bain and Carter watched the grim little doctor pick up his bag and follow the stretcher crew up to the road. Then Bain turned and knelt beside John Graham’s body.

  “It looks like he’s got you cold, Hanley,” the crash car officer said uncomfortably. “The knot’s all wrong. There isn’t much defense for a man who discards standard first aid procedure in favor of some self planned method.”

  Hanley knew. There was no excuse or apology. He’d practiced enough, so tying the correct knot should have been practically second nature.

  Bain sighed, “Well, it’s out of our hands. It’s up to the homicide squad and the coroner to decide whether there’s evidence to support criminal charges against you. Your wisest move right now is to report to your station and turn in a written report on the whole thing. You want to put your side of the story on the record right away.”

  “I guess so,” Hanley agreed tonelessly. He owed it to Marie and the two kids to make the best possible statement of the case. He had no heart for it, though. There was room for only searing regret in his aching brain as he wheeled from that last glance at John Graham. A life snuffed out—because a cop’s thick, hurrying fingers had slipped.

  The cop climbed up the canyon’s slope, stiffly. The ambulance was gone, the doctor’s car gone, too, and Hanley’s motorcycle stood forlorn in the shine of the crash car’s headlamps.

  Hanley leaned against the broken fence, breathing hard and not from the climb. Some things a man doesn’t really realize until he’s alone, and face-to-face with his inner self.

  Fool! the voice of self-accusation whispered. Blundering murderous fool. His blood is on your hands!

  He looked at his hands involuntarily—and sucked in his breath, spilled it explosively. Graham’s car had crashed through the fence, taken a section of the guard rail with it. On the fresh, jagged splinters of the fence a gossamer of gold swayed captive in the breeze and auto glare.

  Gold?

  No; wool. Yellow wool. One woolen thread, that’s what it was. Where someone had followed the fenceline and ducked through the break, turning just a bit too abruptly.

  Hanley’s breath sawed in his throat, a noisy sound of shock and incredulity. Doctor Wrenn was a little man in dapper oxford grey. Bain and Carter wore police blues, the ambulance crew hospital whites. Nobody in yellow had passed through that broken fence at all. Nobody that Hanley had seen . . .

  Unseen, then, and surreptitiously there had been another.

  “Bain—!” But he didn’t say it, the shout died short of his lips. He crouched, instinctively put his head and shoulders as low as the road’s level.

  The car came fast. Its rubber screamed on the curve, the hurtling body of it split the night with full-throttled rush. Wind suction tugged at Hanley as he stood and stared after Paula Chanin.

  Gar Chanin’s wife. The one he’d hailed and sent for help. He remembered the aristocratic profile of her lovely face, haughty and spoiled. But what had she worn? It might have been something yellow—or green, or black, or any color. On that detail, Hanley’s memory was a total loss.

  He broke in a running lunge for his cycle, legged himself astride its saddle—and gave chase.

  The road was a cement corkscrew glued into the hills. Paula Chanin’s machine swooped and ran for it, winking red on the curves where she stabbed the brakes. Hanley’s siren threw a halfmile scream of warning, and the car ahead shot faster around the next curve.

  She was gone.

  Hanley throttled down, turned on a hairpin, and jogged back a hundred yards. He rode into a driveway and dismounted beside the gurgling car. Its steaming motor sent heat up from the floorboards as he looked in, held his flashlight to the ownership certificate under the wheel.

  Gar Chanin’s car.

  Hanley swung, stared at the house. Black windows stared back, insolent. He advanced, perplexed. Maybe she hadn’t gone in here at all. Maybe she’d just ducked into the handiest driveway, taking the chance he’d ride by. He stood on the porch, and a window drape stuck out its white tongue at him. The window was open. Hanley put his head and shoulders into the outdraught of warm air.

  Heels tick-tocked inside the house. Hanley muscled his six-foot leanness across the sill. The tick-tock stopped. There was a rustle like small scurrying animals. He tiptoed. A pale sliver of light seeped under a door. Hanley opened the door.

  Gar Chanin’s wife whirled from the open desk. A tiny flashlight on the desk backlighted her, and ran its track along the pointed gun.

  She gasped, “I’ll shoot!” Hanley’s flash beam smote her. She was brunette, with a proud oval of face. Her breasts thrust against a sweater, and the sweater was yellow.

  Hanley said with detached, family man calm: “Your slip’s showing, Mrs. Chanin.”

  He’d been married long enough; he knew. Say that to a woman, and nine times out of ten her feminine response will be automatic. She can’t help it, any more than her golfing husband can ignore the cry, “Fore!”

  “What?” Gar Chanin’s wife said. “Why, I’m not wearing—” But her eyes had dropped, the pointed gun wavering away as she peered down.

  “Hah!” said Hanley, beside her. He grabbed the gun, and then held onto her arm. The sweater’s sleeve
was snagged.

  “Let go! Take your hands off me!” Hanley said, “So you didn’t go for help right away. You pulled over to the other side of the road, and followed me down there.”

  “I—that’s a lie!”

  “You caught your sweater on the fence, remember? I guess in the dark you didn’t know you were leaving a thread there.”

  Her slimness grew taut, startled. The lifted breasts stayed poised, on the peak of a deep-drawn breath. A second slid by—another.

  She relaxed, grimly. “I did? Well, how much is it going to cost me?”

  “Cost—?”

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she gibed. “You’ve got my name. You know who my husband is, no doubt.”

  “He’s a banker, and the fair-haired boy in the Reform League,” Hanley said. “Our next Governor, maybe.”

  “It’s very nice for you, having me in a position like this.” She spoke with ironic scorn. “All right, it’s true I stopped the car and went partway down there—close enough to see. I thought it might be Graham’s convertible. I’d passed one as I came up the hill, the only car I did pass. He wasn’t at home here, and that made it doubly likely.”

  “Here? This is John Graham’s home?”

  “I thought you knew that, too. Oh, well. You’d have found it out, anyway.”

  Hanley mused aloud. “You drove up here, and he wasn’t home. So you turned around and followed—?”

  Gar Chanin’s wife said, “Please don’t play cat-and-mouse games. Just name your price. If it’s within reason, I’ll pay. If not, you can have your nasty little scandal.”

  “Why did you come here to see him?” questioned Hanley.

  “You go to blue blazes!”

  “Graham was older ‘n I am. And fat. It wouldn’t be love. Hate, maybe.” Hanley’s tone gathered brute force. “What’d you hate him for? Enough to loosen that tourniquet and let him bleed to death?”

  She swayed, wide-eyed. Her mouth puckered, made a bruised shape. “Death . . .