Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “But the child—the child we saw—?” whispered Marian breathlessly.

  Dr. Gabriel looked at her quizzically, and she lowered her eyes in confusion.

  “That was another point you failed to tell me,” said the little doctor. “Of course I knew—and I congratulate you and your husband both.”

  “She was blind,” said Marian in a whisper. “Just part of that fiend’s repertoire of tricks.”

  “I don’t know how we can repay you—” Roger began.

  Gabriel laughed. “How about painting my portrait for the benefit of posterity?” he asked.

  THESE SHOES ARE KILLING ME

  Leroy Yerxa

  Footprints all around the corpse; but they were all prints of the left foot!

  INSPECTOR JAMES HALL was, like his office, a classical example of unadorned simplicity. Hall didn’t like puzzles and he didn’t like details. Puzzles troubled his solid head, and right now, as he slammed down the phone, the toughest problem he’d faced in months sent three thick fingers scratching over his bald head. He sat very still for a few minutes, shaking his head back and forth like an angry bull. Then his thick fist crashed down on the desk top in sudden decision. When he picked up the phone once more there was a suggestion of a twinkle in the dark, deep set eyes.

  “Hello! Sergeant? Listen! Send in Robert Case. Yes, the little wonder boy of the detective squad.”

  He listened impatiently as the receiver chattered back at him. His jaw hardened into set lines.

  “Yes! Well, I think we’ve got something here that will keep little Robert Case busy for a while before he solves it. Quite a while!”

  Inspector Hall dropped the phone and buzzed the main desk. Over the communication set he ordered a squad car to stand by. Tall and homely as a bald eagle, Hall unfolded himself from the chair and jerked on his overcoat. He was just pulling the battered felt down where it would conceal his lack of head shrubbery when a light knock sounded on the door.

  “Come on in, Case,” he shouted.

  The door opened and a small, dapper individual entered. Robert Case had an innocent face that made him look like a choir boy who had just left church. He approached Hall with short steps and Hall was suddenly conscious of how carefully polished Case’s shoes were in comparison to his own well worn boots.

  “Bob,” Hall began before Case could open his mouth. “I got troubles.”

  Robert Case was slipping into the soft overcoat he had carried on his arm. He smiled.

  “Man or woman? Knife, gun or poison? Your troubles are mine, Inspector. Let’s share them.”

  Hall leaned on his desk, extracted a Havana from his pocket and started to chew the end of it.

  “Murder,” he said shortly. “Murder by strangulation.”

  Robert Case seemed to deflate. A pained expression crossed his face.

  “Look Jim,” he pleaded, “I’m not cut out for this rough stuff. Go get your man, convict him and burn him. I’ll stay here and play bridge with myself.”

  He started to remove his coat.

  “Wait a minute,” Hall said. “I’m willing to get the murderer all right. There’s just one point I thought might interest you.”

  Case said nothing. He was accustomed to Inspector Hall’s build-ups.

  “The man choked his victim and tossed her into the swamp just outside the city limits on Route 6. He left a raft of footprints all around the body. Bob, every damned one of those prints were made with a shoe from the left foot.”

  Case watched him silently, but his wide, gray eyes narrowed.

  “That would point to a one-legged murderer hopping around, fighting with the girl and finally killing her?”

  Hall nodded hopelessly.

  “For a while I was almost ready to believe that,” he admitted. “But, by the saints, Case, it’s impossible.”

  Robert Case grinned. He slapped a spotless hat over well combed hair, and turned abruptly toward the door.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said. “What are we waiting for?”

  ROUTE 6 crossed a section of muddy, reed grown swamp land just west of the city limits. Beyond the drainage canal, Inspector Hall saw the usual line of press cars, two squad cars and the death wagon. He pressed the brake pedal down gently and they rolled to a stop at the rear of the line. Down the steep bank a crowd had gathered at a respectable distance from the body. He opened the door, stepped out—and slipped on the clay bank. Robert Case, following at a more sedate speed, watched Inspector Hall take a complete turn on his back and land in the slime at the bottom. With no visible emotion on his face, Case went down the bank carefully. Hall was on his feet, face red and angry. Mud covered his overcoat.

  “Jumping into this murder case with more gusto than usual, aren’t you, Jim?”

  Hall muttered darkly under his breath and the men who waited parted to form a straight line between him and the girl on the ground. Hall, head down, approached the body and walked around it in a wide circle. His eyes were on those footprints. The first phone report had been accurate. The girl was dressed in a white evening gown, low at the neck and covered by a short fur coat. Her dress was torn up one side, revealing a left leg. The throat was marked and bruised. Footprints were visible in the mud all about her. He went to his knees to study them, and felt rather than saw Case standing above him.

  Robert Case’s face was a study in dull anger. When he spoke, his words were low and choked with feeling.

  “Yes! I see the prints. They’re all from a left shoe. They’re a damned clever start to what the murderer thinks is a perfect crime.” He paused, as though to catch his breath. “Jim! I think the man must be a maniac to think he can get away with this. He’s tried so hard that he’ll trip himself into our arms by himself; and when he does . . .”

  Hall stood up and tried to clean the mud from his clothing.

  “That’s all,” he said quietly. “I knew when the boys called me that this wasn’t the usual murder.”

  Case nodded.

  “Tell your blood hounds to clean the place up. I want to know who the girl is. Make sure that strangulation was the real cause of her death.”

  He turned away from the figure on the ground and climbed carefully back up the steep bank to the side of the car.

  Away from the body, he seemed to relax. Hall followed him, and reached the small man as he painstakingly scraped the last bit of mud from the highly polished shoes. Case looked up at the disgruntled inspector and the old smile came back.

  “Just one thing, Jim,” he suggested. “Don’t look for a one-legged man. If you couldn’t get down that bank with both pins under you, he could have never managed to force the girl to go down there.”

  ROBERT CASE had a headache. For a man who made his living tracking down killers, his heart was much too tender. He sat across from Inspector James Hall’s desk, one knee crossed carefully over the other, his eyes glued to a two-page report. The details in black and white were even more horrible than the sight of the body itself. He read steadily for some minutes, then dropped the paper on the desk and stared steadily into Hall’s puzzled eyes. The Inspector returned the stare.

  “So she was Helen Kane,” Case said slowly. “Helen Kane, age twenty-six, came from a decent family, worked in a down town office and lived for nights like last night when she could put on the only nice things she owned and go stepping out among the bright lights.”

  Hall said nothing.

  “That still leaves us without the right foot to stand on,” Case added. He stood up, brushed out the wrinkles on his trousers and folded the papers carefully into an envelope.

  “If I’m not mistaken, Jim, we’ll get along quite nicely by waiting for a few hours. These things never stop after the first round. Let me know if anything comes up that seems to link with Helen Kane.”

  Hall seemed to awaken from his trance suddenly, switched the unlighted Havana to the far corner of his lips and grunted.

  “Sounds good the way you put it,” he admitted. “Unfortunat
ely the department can’t wait for murderers to hang themselves. We’ve got to go after this thing while it’s hot. Every hour we wait will make the trail that much harder to pick up.”

  Case hesitated at the door, turned half around and slipped into his coat.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that if I were you,” he said. “Being small the way I am, I’ve learned that sometimes pretty big things come to those who wait long enough for them.”

  The door clicked softly and he was gone. Hall swore aloud and slapped an impatient hand on the call bell. In three minutes he was dictating orders at high speed. Inspector Hall believed in action, and stressed it in every move of his impatient hands. To wait was to worry and worry could make him a driving maniac inside of twenty-four hours.

  “I THINK we’ve got something here,” Robert Case said, as the squad car lurched under them and slipped out into the foggy, rain spattered court. “You say the policeman found Helen Kane’s picture on the wall of his room?”

  Inspector Hall nodded grimly. In the rush from the office he had forgotten his hat. Under the pale light of the car interior, his bald head shone.

  “Yeah. Sergeant Graves reported ten minutes ago that a man had been found dead in his room at the LaGrove Hotel. He didn’t think much about it until he found this framed picture of Helen Kane on the wall. It was signed, ‘With love to Glenn.’ He called me at once, thinking I’d be interested.”

  “Are you?” Case’s voice was innocent enough. “I mean, do you suppose there’s a connection?”

  “Connection?” Hall studied the smaller man at his side with eyes that questioned Case’s sanity. “Good Lord, man, it’s as plain as the nose on your face. This guy got rid of his sweetheart, and then committed suicide himself. I’ll bet you . . .”

  “I wouldn’t!” Case held up a restraining hand. “Don’t bet a cent, Jim. You’ve lost every bet we’ve ever made, remember?”

  Hall stopped talking abruptly but the twinkle in his eyes grew more pronounced as they approached the downtown section. This time, he decided, Bob Case could pack up his bag of mysteries and jump in the lake. The case had been simple and to the point. He liked them that way. No headaches.

  The LaGrove Hotel was a small, neat building sandwiched between two theatres. The night clerk took them up at once, beating a hasty retreat after he pointed out the door to the dead man’s room.

  Hall shouldered his way through the half dozen reporters and uniformed men who stood silently inside the door. Case, taking advantage of the Inspector’s interference, followed in his wake.

  They stood close to the edge of the bed, staring down at the figure sprawled across it. The coroner, young and impatient at his late visit, looked up from his job of emptying the dead man’s pockets.

  “Good evening, Inspector Hall. Suppose you want the details?” He held out a handful of trinkets, started to talk like a well-trained machine.

  “Name’s Glenn Halliday. Got that from his pocket book. Age about thirty-two. Was in good health. Died from a gunshot in the head. He held the gun close to his temple and fired it after stretching out on the bed and removing his shoes.”

  He stopped abruptly, and watched Robert Case go to one knee at the side of the bed. The little detective reached under the draped blanket and drew a pair of shoes into the light. Hall’s breath sucked in quickly.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  Case stood up, drew a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully removed dried clay from his finger tips.

  “From the looks of this,” he admitted, “that’s exactly what you’ll be for some time—damned.”

  The shoes were of average material, low cut and sporty. The left shoe was covered with mud, dried and flaking from the instep. The right shoe was clean and polished. It had not been worn enough to soil the bottom of the smooth sole.

  THE men in the room were silent. Hall’s eyes glued themselves to the shoes on the floor, then swept up suspiciously to the still, wax-like body stretched across the bed. The lips were cold and sealed tightly. He would never learn from them the mystery of the clean right shoe. A low whistle escaped the coroner’s lips. He stood up, passed the handful of trinkets from the dead man’s pocket to Inspector Hall and put on his hat.

  “He’s been dead since last night,” he said. “I’d set the time sometime between eight and ten o’clock.”

  Hall’s head ducked mechanically, his eyes still staring at the body on the bed.

  “Could it be possible . . .?”

  An audible chuckle escaped Robert Case’s lips.

  “Jim,” he begged, “don’t say it. You’re getting to the place where you actually believe the man hopped all over town on one leg.”

  Hall pivoted, facing the diminutive Case. His face was red with anger.

  “Sure,” he admitted shortly. “I’m crazy. The man has a muddy left shoe, there were left shoe prints all around Helen Kane’s body, he has her picture on his wall, but he couldn’t possibly have murdered her. If that’s what you’re trying to tell me, suppose I admit you’re right. Just one point, Mister Case. How did he do it?”

  Case shrugged his shoulders.

  “Damned if I know, Jim,” he admitted coolly. “But if one of the boys will hold the door open for a quick escape, I’m going to suggest that one of his legs might be short enough so it never touched the ground. I was never meant for this all-night murder business, and I’m going home right now and get a decent night’s rest.”

  Inspector Hall’s answer fell on unappreciative ears. Robert Case was beating a hasty retreat down the long corridor toward the single elevator.

  PERCY WALLACE was a sincere, earnest young man. Attired in a neat brown suit, plain silk tie, and juggling a nervous Adam’s apple, he awaited Inspector James Hall’s pleasure. Percy Wallace had announced his presence in a rather meek voice, asked to see Hall about the Kane killing and now sat on the edge of the hard bench in the waiting room.

  Somewhere in the hollow halls of police headquarters, Percy Wallace heard a voice thunder:

  “Well! What are you waiting for, you pinhead? Send him in! Call Case and get him in here. Start moving before your legs rust off!”

  A very red-faced police sergeant appeared before Percy Wallace. Some of Inspector Hall’s wrath carried itself with him.

  “Come on,” he growled. “The Inspector says you can come in.”

  Mr. Wallace arose, stroked his Adam’s apple tenderly and cleared his throat. “Th-thanks.”

  He followed the blue coat of the law down a short hall, and found himself facing an open door. The door was very large and the room behind it did not look inviting. Percy Wallace stepped inside and faced the huge, baldheaded man behind the desk.

  Inspector Hall stood up slowly, feeling stiffness in his bones. He scratched his head rather thoughtfully at the sight of his mild visitor and motioned him to a chair by the desk.

  “Mr. Wallace?”

  Percy Wallace nodded. Hall’s great hand came across the desk top and folded over Wallace’s hand. Percy Wallace winced and wriggled his freed fingers experimentally.

  Robert Case came in silently, acknowledged an introduction and sat down. He picked up a law book from the desk, never bothering to take a second look at the slim young man with the bobbing Adam’s apple.

  Inspector Hall started chewing carefully on his cigar.

  “Well, Mr. Wallace?” his voice was a little impatient. “I understand you have information concerning the murder of Helen Kane?”

  At the mention of the girl, Robert Case’s eyes darted up and over the newcomer, then returned to the open book.

  At last Percy Wallace had something to grasp. Something he could talk about with interest and personal knowledge.

  He nodded his head slightly and leaned forward in his chair.

  “I’m a shoe salesman at the Regent Shoe House,” he started. “Saturday I sold Mr. Glenn Halliday a pair of shoes.”

  “Halliday?” Hall shot forward, his hands outspread on th
e desk top. “You mean the man who committed suicide at the Hotel LaGrove?”

  Wallace swallowed his Adam’s apple, looked quickly at the little man still buried in the law book and turned back to Hall.

  “Y-yes sir!” His voice was strong and determined. “I saw his picture in the morning paper and I read all about the shoes and I have a confession to make.”

  “Confession? You mean you’re the murderer?”

  PERCY WALLACE gulped in alarm, and Robert Case chuckled ever so slightly. He didn’t look up. Hall’s face turned red, and Wallace hastened to explain.

  “Oh, no sir!” He would have to explain everything now, and in a hurry. The big man behind the desk frightened him badly.

  “You see, it was like this. This man, Glenn Halliday, came in Saturday afternoon to buy a pair of shoes. He tried on a number of them but Mr. Halliday didn’t seem easy to fit.”

  Hall nodded impatiently.

  “Never mind the shoe business,” he said. “Tell me only the things that have something to do with the murder.”

  Wallace looked surprised.

  “But everything has to do with it.”

  Hall groaned aloud; and behind his book, Case suddenly turned red and started to read with renewed interest. Percy Wallace went on with his story.

  “As I told you, Mr. Halliday had trouble with his feet. Well, at last I managed to find a perfect fit. The shoes were wrapped and he paid for them and left. As is customary, I took his name and address for my sales slip. It wasn’t until closing time that I discovered the ghastly error.”

  Percy Wallace stopped talking, took a deep breath and swallowed his Adam’s apple once more. Hall’s face was livid.

  “Discovered what?” he roared.

  “Why, the two right shoes,” Wallace explained. “By mistake I had given Mr. Halliday two left shoes. As soon as we closed, I packed away the opened boxes and found two rights with no lefts to match. You can imagine how I felt?”

  Hall shook his head.

  “I can’t,” he admitted, “but go on.”

  “Of course there was only one thing to do. I rushed straight to Mr. Halliday, and took the correct shoe to him. I will say he wasn’t a gentleman about it.”