Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “Damned inefficiency! That laundry was promised for this morning. It is already late afternoon. It has not arrived.”

  Mr. Dibble was silent long enough to catch his breath. And in that moment the voice on the other end of the line was evidently guilty of making a reassuring remark.

  The full force of Dibble’s ire exploded.

  “It had damned well better be right up!” he shouted. Then he slammed the telephone hard into the cradle.

  Mr. Dibble turned from the telephone and went over to the bourbon and water he’d left by the dresser. The sight of his trousers on the bed deepened the purple of his complexion.

  A gentleman, he told himself savagely, never donned trousers without first donning drawers. He was damned if, after working forty years to get to be a gentleman, he was going to break any of the rules now.

  But he didn’t have any drawers.

  Not any, that is, that he could put his hands on at the moment. He had drawers back at his home in Scranton. Scads of them. Probably as many or more drawers than other men as financially well situated as he.

  However, when he had embarked on this trip to Chicago, he had taken half a dozen pairs of drawers with him—enough to carry him comfortably over the laundry situation for his brief stay.

  But he hadn’t figured on having them stolen by an eager but witless bellhop who was a solicitor for a Chinese laundry on the side.

  Dibble had been sound asleep when it happened.

  The bellhop had entered his room while Dibble slumbered. He had spied Dibble’s neatly folded linen lying on a chair, presumed it had been left there to be taken to the laundry, and had made off with it.

  That had been twenty-four hours previously.

  ON RISING to discover the absence of his undershirts, handkerchiefs and—most important—drawers, Dibble had put in a thundering call to the management, reporting the theft.

  But the management had assured him that there had been no theft. A regrettable mistake had been made, that was all. Mr. Dibble could rest assured that his linen had merely been mistakenly carried off to the laundry. The bellboy had gotten his room numbers mixed. Mr. Dibble could count on the return of his laundry within twenty-four hours. In spite of the wartime laundry shortage, the management of the hotel added proudly, they could still secure swift service for a customer of Dibble’s status.

  Dibble had been somewhat mollified on finding one last pair of drawers in his luggage. They would see him through until the morrow, and the laundry would be on hand then.

  Yet this was the morrow, and the laundry had not arrived. Worse, there had been another mistake made by the eager bellboy. Once again, as Dibble slept, the youth had mixed his room numbers, entered Dibble’s sanctum, and carried off his sole remaining pair of drawers.

  It was this second stupid pilfering which had resulted in Delbert Dibble’s blowing his top to the hotel management. Not only was he left bereft of any clean drawers, he was left without any drawers whatsoever.

  Fortunately Dibble hadn’t risen until noon. This saved him several hours, less mental agony, not to mention necessary nudity. And on discovering that his last pair of drawers had vanished, and that his laundry was already overdue in arriving, Dibble had inaugurated the first and most violent of his every-ten-minute telephone calls to the management.

  Now he glared at his pin-striped trousers atop the bedspread and made for his bourbon and water. This was the dozenth call he had made, and on the next one, by Judas, he was going to call his lawyers and institute suit.

  Dibble plunked himself in the rather scratchy confines of an armchair and picked up his drink.

  “I’ll have this case dragged to the highest court in the land,” he muttered, taking a savage swallow from the glass. “If that laundry isn’t here this time, I’ll sue that sticky-fingered management for every last—”

  At that moment, there was a discreet knock on Mr. Dibble’s door.

  Dibble was about to shout for the knocker to enter, then he remembered his embarrassing lack of attire and demanded to know the identity of the person seeking entrance.

  “Bellhop with your laundry, sir.”

  Dibble almost fell over himself in his haste to unbolt the door and admit the pimply, uniformed young bellhop.

  By way of a tip, Dibble shot the youth a glare that sent him scooting off in terror. And when he was safely out of the room, Dibble took the package of laundry to his bed, snapped the strings, removed the wrapping paper, and stared perplexed at the contents which lay before him.

  There were handkerchiefs atop the pile of laundry. Unfamiliar handkerchiefs, with the initials “JK” on them. Dibble frowned irritably, tossed these aside, and began to burrow deep into the pile for his precious drawers.

  There were many other items unfamiliar to Dibble. Impatiently, he tossed these aside and ferreted on. Suddenly, to his shocked rage, he was down to the last item in the pile and suddenly aware that none of this was his laundry.

  It was the last item that brought this fact forcibly to Dibble’s consciousness—a pair of drawers.

  They represented the only drawers Dibble had encountered in the entire bundle, and they were distinctly not Delbert Dibble’s kind of underwear.

  These drawers were hideously colored, wildly patterned; Dibble owned drawers only of a chaste, unpatterned white. These drawers were not drawers at all, but the sort of modern garment called “shorts.” The drawers Dibble owned were drawers in the strictest sense of the word. They were long, extending modestly to the ankle. And finally, these drawers were silk, whereas Dibble’s had always been soft, fine linen.

  MR. DIBBLE cried his dismay hoarsely to the empty room, and held the offending drawers aloft like a man who had just discovered a thumb in his hash.

  The flashing splendor of the colors and the wildly shouting pattern smote Dibble in the eyes, and he dropped the hideous garment quickly.

  “This,” he gasped, shaking with indignation, “is not only not my laundry, it is the laundry of some race track tout, some—some gigolo, some harebrained collegiate playboy!”

  Dibble stood there, staring down in horror at the drawers, his fists clenching and unclenching as wave upon wave of anger smote him. His breath came heavily through his nostrils.

  “I’ll sue them for every damned penny they own,” he whispered shakily. “I’ll—”

  The telephone rang.

  Mr. Dibble found it difficult to tear his eyes from the grim fascination of the multicolored drawers, but the insistent ringing of the bell would not be denied.

  He walked slowly to the telephone, looking over his shoulder several times at the atrocity that lay on the bed, as if he were uncertain that it was safe to turn his back on the drawers.

  “Hello,” Dibble rasped. “That you, Dell?”

  Dibble recognized the voice. Benning. Important business connection. Dibble had an appointment with him later in the evening. Wise to be nice to Benning. Dibble fought for control of himself, forced his voice to sound reasonably level as he talked to Benning.

  “Why, yes, Benning. Yes, of course. I can make it earlier. Glad to. Glad to dine with you. At your club? Fine. Fine. Be there in half an hour. Glad you caught me in. Goodbye, old man.”

  Dibble put the telephone back in the cradle, gently this time, his mind occupied with the matters of business suggested by the call.

  “Damn,” Dibble muttered. “Half an hour. Not much time. Can’t very well afford to put him off, however. Guess I’ll have to hurry my dressing and get down there.”

  It was then, as his eyes again caught the flamboyant drawers, that Dibble remembered his predicament.

  “My God!” he gasped hoarsely.

  His blood pressure jumped several registers. “No drawers!” he groaned.

  But it was preposterous, utterly preposterous that he should be held from such an important appointment because of a lack of drawers. Dibble told himself this several times in the next few minutes.

  Then he went to the telephone.


  “Hello,” he said resolutely, “I want the laundry service.”

  WHILE he waited for the connection to be made, Dibble reminded himself that he had sworn to keep cool during the ensuing conversation. He had been blowing up all day, and it hadn’t been getting him anywhere. There was no time for rage now, even though he felt it burbling deep inside him. He had to keep cool. He had to get this thing straightened out as quickly as possible. “Hello,” Dibble said again, a few moments later, “laundry service?” He was told that it was.

  “This is Mr. Delbert Dibble speaking. You delivered a package of laundry to my room just a few minutes ago. Now, tell me, was any other package sent along to any other room at the time you sent the young halfwit along with it?”

  Mr. Dibble listened, satisfaction corning into his expression.

  “I see. You sent one other package along with the young nincompoop, eh? And to what room was he supposed to deliver that other package?”

  Mr. Dibble smiled in grim triumph.

  “I see. Room eight-oh-nine. Thank you very much. What? No. Nothing at all. I was merely curious. Thank you.”

  Dibble hung up the telephone in triumph. It had worked much better this way. Very much better. He felt quite proud of himself. He had restrained a natural homicidal rage and succeeded in getting all the information he desired. The laundry people had wondered what was up, why he was curious. But he hadn’t told them. Had he told them they would have sent the same halfwitted bellhop up to straighten out the situation and it would have been messed up beautifully once again. Mr. Dibble was taking no chances on having the situation messed up again.

  He went over to the bed, stared martyr-like at the atrocious drawers lying there, steeled himself with a deep breath, and picked them up.

  “Just for a few minutes,” Dibble muttered. “After all, dammit, I am still a gentleman.”

  Mr. Dibble, looking much like a man stepping into a pool of flaming oil, grimly donned the atrocious drawers. Then, quickly, as if he were washing down bitter medicine with a chaser, he stepped into his pin-striped trousers.

  He sighed, releasing his breath. For the first time that day, he was completely, if not decently, attired.

  Mr. Dibble glanced at himself in the mirror, and felt much better. There was no visible sign of the atrocious taste mercifully concealed by his pinstriped trousers. And no one would ever know, unless he were suddenly to drop dead of a heart attack and be hauled off to the morgue for an autopsy. But then death would make his shame quite without pain.

  Mr. Dibble closed the door of his room behind him, lighted an expensive havana, and his self-respect almost completely restored, walked confidently down the hotel hallway to the elevator. He punched the button, waited for a car to stop, stepped in, dropped a floor, and stepped out on eight.

  “I shall explain the situation to the fellow as quickly as I can,” Dibble told himself. “After all, I won’t want to tarry with any person capable of owning such absolutely shameful drawers.”

  Mr. Dibble suddenly asked himself how he was going to explain the absence of the unknown gentleman’s loud drawers from the package he carried. Then he smiled. A simple little lie would suffice.

  “I shall tell him that I might have left them in my room, and will send them down with a bellhop,” Dibble thought. “I can then go up to my room, slip out of these awful drawers, get into something respectable, and call a muddle-headed bellhop to take the hideous things down to the owner.”

  MR. DIBBLE felt considerably pleased with himself. He shifted the bundle of mis-delivered laundry into his other arm, glanced at the room numbers on the doors he passed, then halted. Eight-oh-nine. This would be it. This was the room to which his own laundry had been quite mistakenly delivered. This was the room, to which the laundry Dibble had received should have been delivered.

  He knocked briskly on the door.

  Although Mr. Dibble gave the occupant time enough to drop whatever he was doing, there was no answer. Dibble waited another moment, then pressed the buzzer at the side of the door. He could hear it ringing in the room. But he heard no movement in answer to it. Heard nothing, in fact, to indicate that anyone was in.

  Dibble frowned and, for the first time, began to be worried. He hadn’t counted on this. If the person were out, he was in a hell of a predicament. He’d not be able to get his drawers in time to make his business appointment, and he felt slightly nauseated at the prospects of having to wear the atrocious drawers for the next eight or more hours.

  Mr. Dibble knocked again. Impatiently. He tried the door knob, and it turned easily in his hand. The door swung inward. Dibble coughed, by way of mannered warning, then called:

  “I say, there!”

  Dibble waited, while his words rang into the room and back into his ears. There wasn’t any answer. There wasn’t any sound.

  Dibble stepped into the room, peering down the short half hall leading into the bedroom. He sniffed, frowning. Something was odd. There was an odor in the air that was extremely peculiar. An acrid, smoky odor. Much like cordite.

  He moved more rapidly, into the bedroom, then stopped quite suddenly, frozen in shock at what confronted him.

  There was a man in the room. A man sprawled on the floor next to the bed.

  Dibble was no coroner, but he knew instinctively that the man was dead. The man’s head and torso lay across a mass of old newspapers, and the newspapers were stained with something reddish purple that oozed slowly from a gaping hole in the man’s forehead.

  Very slowly, Dibble put down the laundry package in his arms. Then he stepped gingerly forward, bent over to have a better look at the corpse.

  The face was half turned, partly covered by blood from the wound. But Dibble was able to see that the face had been handsome, the hair dark and wavy, and the body of somewhat athletic proportions. The corpse, Dibble judged, was that of a man in his middle thirties.

  In spite of the thousand-and-one other reactions that were running through his mind, Dibble found himself concerned with the attire of the corpse. A flannel suit, gray, pin-striped, much too sharply cut. Black and tan shoes, very pointed at the toes. Silk socks with loud red and gray patterning.

  Just the sort, Dibble thought sourly, who’d wear such atrocious drawers.

  And then it occurred to Mr. Dibble that he was staring at the very violent results of someone’s dislike for another. It came to him, very suddenly, that he was looking at murder for the first time in his life.

  It is to Mr. Dibble’s considerable credit that he didn’t get rattled. He could feel that his heartbeat increased and that a strangely pleasurable tingling of excitement was creeping over him. But his nerves, his emotions, were calm.

  “Well,” Dibble said slowly. “Well, I’m damned.”

  DIBBLE fished into his pocket unthinkingly, automatically bringing forth a cigar. He bit off the end, lighted it, inhaled deeply.

  Dibble glanced at the bed, then, and saw an open laundry parcel there. He stepped back from the corpse and around to the bed. There was nothing left in the laundry bundle save four handkerchiefs. On each of these Dibble recognized his own monogram.

  He felt a small satisfaction in knowing he’d been right in his analysis of the laundry mix-up. But where was the rest of the laundry, his laundry, that should have been in that bundle?

  He stepped over the corpse, moved to the closet off the small hallway from the door, and glanced inside. A quick, thorough inspection revealed no sign of the rest of his laundry.

  He went back to the bedroom, stepped over the corpse once more, and went to the dresser. He opened each drawer noiselessly, but again found no trace of the rest of his laundry.

  Dropping to his knees, Dibble peered under the bed. Nothing there. He sighed, clambering to his feet, stared reflectively again at the corpse. “Damned nuisance!” Dibble muttered. Then he moved to the telephone at the head of the bed. Telephone in hand, Dibble said impatiently: “Hello. Hello. Get me the management. This is urgent.” />
  Mr. Dibble repeated this twice before he realized that the line was dead and that he was getting no response.

  He put the instrument back in the cradle, traced the wires to the box, and discovered that they had been pulled, or snipped, at the point of entry to the box.

  Mr. Dibble snorted in exasperation. “Vandals!”

  He left the telephone, stepped once again around the corpse, glanced at the laundry bundle he had dropped on the floor, and left the room.

  Downstairs, Mr. Dibble crossed the lobby without undue haste and walked, without knocking, into the manager’s office.

  The manager, a thin, nervous, too-eager little man, was sitting at his desk. He looked up as Dibble entered.

  “You’ve had a murder in your establishment,” Dibble said without any preamble. “Person in room eight-oh-nine.”

  The manager stared at Mr. Dibble in horror . . .

  “THIS is the room,” Dibble said, some five minutes later, pausing before eight-oh-nine.

  With him was the thin, nervous little hotel manager and a bulking, indolent, triple-chinned person named Fagin, who was the house detective.

  “Well, let’s go in,” Fagin said in his sandpaper voice.

  “Yes,” said the little manager tremulously, sounding very much as if it were the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

  Dibble pushed the door open, and they followed him in.

  “Nasty looking mess,” Dibble began, moving through the narrow hallway into the bedroom. And then he stopped short.

  The house detective, Fagin, almost plowed into Dibble as he stopped suddenly.

  “Where—” Fagin began. Then his sentence, too, hung incomplete in the air.

  Dibble was staring speechlessly at the bedroom. The place was not at all as he had found it some ten minutes before. Ten minutes ago there had been a corpse stretched beside the bed, its head oozing blood onto a smear of old newspapers. There had been the laundry, which Dibble himself had dropped on the floor, not to mention the open laundry package which had contained Dibble’s own monogrammed handkerchiefs.