Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  The older man nodded his head slowly. “She was dead,” he said in his husky whisper. “As dead as they die. I went into her room when I came upstairs to find out why she hadn’t come down. She was sitting at her dressing table trying on the necklace. I spoke to her, and she said she’d be right down. Then I went up to the third floor to get some cigarettes. About five minutes later, coming down, I saw Scanlon walking out of Louisa’s room. She was dead on the floor when I went in.”

  SCANLON turned his cold eyes on Pete as the nephew touched Tupps on the arm and said, “Yeah, I saw him come out, too. Saw him as I was coming up the stairs.”

  “You’re a liar,” breathed Scanlon venomously. “You probably killed her yourself.”

  “Well, whoever did it, did a very clean job. Very little blood around,” interrupted the coroner as he walked up to Tupps bearing his little black medical bag in one hand and flourishing a short-hilted, long-bladed letter opener in the other.

  “Told you so,” murmured Bayliss picking up the instrument from the table where the coroner laid it with his handkerchief. “No fingerprints, of course?” he asked. The coroner shook his head.

  Bayliss handed the knife to Tupps. “Arrest the maid,” he grinned.

  Nick Cardini looked at him quizzically. “There are two maids,” he said.

  Tupps was gazing at the knife. He turned it over and over in his hands, then beckoning to the coroner, went outside and upstairs.

  The inspector was gone a long time. When he finally came back, he walked to the telephone that rested on the huge desk and made a long distance call. It was impossible for the others to hear as he talked in low tones.

  After a time, he looked up, scanned the circle of faces, moved close to the chair where Scanlon still sat.

  Tupps was still a yard or so from the ex-jewel thief when he put his fingers into his left vest pocket and extracted something which glittered and flashed. In the light from the great crystal chandelier, Bayliss made out a huge, platinum-set diamond ring. The professor mentally calculated its size. Something around twenty or thirty carats. He thought of its immense value.

  Then Bayliss head rocked as a pistol went off at his ear; rocked again as Tupps rapidly ducked, drew his own gun and fired twice. The scream of pain that echoed through the room was followed by a thud as the small pearl-handled revolver that Nick Cardini had drawn and fired at the inspector went spinning into a corner.

  BAYLISS expected quiet then.

  Suddenly Pete Cardini moved. “You dirty—” he began, and turning toward Nick, drew a gun from his pocket. The professor simply shot out a hand and knocked it down. The weapon fired noisily into the floor. Then both Cardinis had been secured and handcuffed, while Bayliss wondered mildly why Pete had screamed imprecations at his uncle instead of at Tupps.

  “Nice work,” said the professor a little breathlessly. “But which of ’em committed the murder?”

  “What murder?” Tupps tossed the ring he was holding high in the air and caught it as it fell, flashing.

  Bayliss gestured vaguely toward the second floor. “Mrs. Cardini—”

  “Died of heart failure.” Tupps smiled faintly.

  “That’s not surprising,” growled Bayliss, “especially when she had four inches of blade sticking in the old pump.”

  “But she didn’t. The blade missed the heart completely. Stuck in the upper apex of the lung instead.”

  “First it’s heart failure. Now it’s lung failure.” Bayliss stared bewildered.

  “No, heart failure. If she’d been alive when she was stabbed in the lung, she’d have coughed up a quart of blood. There wasn’t a drop on her.”

  “Then who stabbed her?”

  “Nick did. He stabbed her after she was dead.”

  “But why should he do that?” Why create the illusion of a murder he never committed?”

  Tupps took out his pipe and slowly tamped tobacco into the bowl. “When a man creates the illusion of a murder he didn’t commit, he’s obviously using the murder as a cover-up for some other crime, a more profitable one.

  “I first suspected something was wrong when the coroner told me that Mrs. Cardini had died of heart failure. If she really died of heart failure, she couldn’t have been killed by a paper knife. Yet the Cardinis insisted she had been murdered, built up a case against Scanlon. When it became obvious that Scanlon hadn’t killed anyone, it simultaneously became clear that either one or both Cardinis were involved.

  “But why? Not for peanuts. Not even for an emerald necklace. There never was an emerald necklace. That story was invented by Nick to swing the blame toward Scanlon. Whether or not the necklace was ever found wasn’t important. Scanlon would always be under suspicion of having stolen it.

  “Yet, if there had been no murder and no theft, something must have been the cause of all the fuss. It was the ring, of course. I found it in Nick’s room, hidden in his highboy.”

  “Was it part of the non-existent family jewels or did it appear where you found it by special dispensation?”

  Tupps smiled. “Diamonds worth fifty grand, at least, come from diamond dealers. When they’re not bought, they’re stolen. When they’re stolen, they’re missed. If they’re missed, people know about it. I simply phoned the blotter desk at Chicago, and they told me the stone had been taken a week ago. So I flashed it on the Cardinis.”

  “But I still don’t get it.” Bayliss gestured nervously toward the bound pair. “What connection has the stone with the murder?”

  “The description of the thief I got over the wire tallies with Pete Cardini. He must have been keeping the gem somewhere downstairs. Nick found out about it, and wanted it himself. When he walked in and found Louisa dead, he realized he could grab the stone in the excitement of the ‘murder,’ while Pete—with a possible rap for jewel theft hanging over him—wouldn’t dare make a peep. Nick framed Scanlon, of course. Pete would suspect only Scanlon.”

  Bayliss glanced at his watch. “Took you a little over an hour. Told you the days of ingenuity were dead.” He turned his gaze on the cringing figure of Nick Cardini. “Just a cheap crook. Couldn’t have outwitted a moron.”

  Tupps looked at him, eye twinkling. “Yes,” he remarked, “but you’ve got to admit he tried.”

  SLAYER’S KEEPERS

  T.W. Ford

  When a perfect murder plan works out perfectly—beware!

  GLARING at the face opposite him, Michael Cheek tossed off a drink of cheap whisky and cursed in a slow weary voice. “You dirty thief, Hoskins! If you don’t pay me I’ll get you yet and—”

  The bartender padded down with a patronizing smile. “Take it easy now, Mr. Mainz! We don’t allow no language like that here. You want we should have ta put ya out like we did Wednesday night, huh?”

  Cheek pushed back his crumpled felt hat over ragged, grayish hair and grimaced belligerently at his own reflection in the bar mirror. Then his shoulders slumped with a gesture of defeat under the shabby topcoat that was a size too big for him. “All right, Joe. All right. Gimme another shot. And get yourself a cigar, Joe.” He detached a quarter from his little pile of change and pushed it over appealingly. “But that damn Lambert Hoskins cheated me once and I swear—”

  “Sure, sure,” agreed the bartender with a bored air. “We heard all about it, Mainz. Ya only told us it a coupla hundred times.”

  “He’s got the money to hire the high-priced lawyers, you see. And now I can’t afford to go to court no more and—” But the barman had already retired to the other end of the counter. He mentioned the name ““Mainz” sotto voice and there was a guffaw from the hangers-on down there. As he brooded over his drink, Michael Cheek seemed not to hear. At times he muttered incoherently. He finally tossed off that one and stood staring at the empty glass in his lean grubby fingers, lips working. What he said then was lost in the raucous jangle of the number on the juke box.

  The weary baritone ended his lament about the amount of rainfall in each life with a final groan, then
there was the sharp clatter of Cheek’s dropped glass on the bar counter. When they looked around, the little man with the beard-stubbled face had a fist cocked awkwardly at his own reflection in the bar mirror. The loungers chuckled: “Old Mainz” was off again. But he seemed to come out of the fog and fumbled out his smelly pipe.

  “Some day he’ll end up in a padded cell,” one of the loungers predicted, not troubling to keep his voice down much.

  “Aw, he’s harmless. For weeks now he’s been threatening to do something to Hoskins, the one up on the hill in the old Prentiss place. But you notice the rich guy is still going ’round in good health!” There was another chorus of guffaws in the dingy small-town place.

  Cheek pushed a hand in a pants pocket, after counting his change on the bar, as if to get it up for another drink. And he was drawing out the hand from his left pocket with a chunky roll of tens and twenties before he realized his mistake. As “Old Mainz” in this little town of Elwort, he wasn’t supposed to have more than a small weekly income. In his right pocket he kept a few soiled singles for exhibition purposes.

  JAMMING the bankroll back, his suddenly sharpened black eyes stabbed upward. There was only a couple on his left, a young fellow in the flashy clothes and a hard-mouthed girl, who’d seen. They looked away quickly and the girl began to talk. But they were out-of-towners; he’d seen them pull up in a car with Ohio license tags, so he didn’t have to worry.

  “ ‘Nother drink, Mr. Mainz?” asked Joe, coming along.

  Cheek pursed his lips, then dragged out an old-fashioned hunting-case watch. “Nope! Nope! I’m going up to see that Lambert Hoskins thief, right now. And this time,” he thumped the bar to accentuate it, “I’m going to get some action! You’ll see!”

  Yanking down his hat, he shuffled out. He stood a moment indecisively on the sidewalk of the country town, rubbing his gloveless hands in the raw Spring day, looking around vaguely as if he weren’t sure of his surroundings. He knew they were watching him from inside. He started hesitantly southward, head down as he carefully moved his shineless shoes around a puddle, and bumped into Gregory, proprietor of the town’s sole restaurant. Cheek occasionally stopped in there for a meager meal, laboriously totalling his check for minutes; more than once he had given the proprietor a tin ear as he whiningly related in redundant detail his vague story of how Lambert Hoskins, the wealthy man up on the hill, had mulcted him in some business deal in the dim past.

  “Oh, hello, hello, Mr. Gregory.” Cheek pulled himself erect with the conscious movements of a little, spent man about to assert himself. “Say, you know where I’m going? I’m going to see Hoskins! And I’m going to read him the riot act! Yes sir. I’m going to tell him—”

  The tall spare Gregory nodded with a knowing smile. “Yes, yes. Well, good luck, Mainz! I’ll see you—” He tried to get by.

  But Michael Cheek clutched at his lapels as he sidled around to get inside him. With his head he indicated the tubby figure of Erskine Fennel, the local banker, going along the other side of the street. Cheek smiled weakly.

  “Don’t want him to see me. . . . I—I—well, I’m a little behind on my rent. And—say, Mr. Gregory, maybe you could spare a—”

  “Sorry. Not today,” snapped Gregory recoiling from the whiskyish breath. “I’m in a hurry right now, Mainz. G’day.” He strode off.

  Cheek’s shoulders slumped and he went plodding on down to the corner, the mould of his face typical of a beaten man. But he was laughing inside: That spontaneous idea of trying to put the bite on Gregory for a loan was the final touch to complete his background for murder that he was building.

  The sedan with Ohio license tags drew up abreast him to await the traffic light change. Cheek saw that the flashy guy and the girl were studying him furtively. His lips thinned as he recalled how they’d seen his roll. They’d better not get any crazy ideas though. He was an expert with the Police positive in the shoulder rig strapped under his suit coat. . . .

  TWO BLOCKS down, the side street curved away from the sluggish tide water stream. A rut-cut dirt; lane branched off from it there. Cheek picked his way up it over damp leaves, allowing himself to reel slightly as he passed the house where the widow lived. With satisfaction he saw a curtain at a front window twitch. Then he was at the head of the lane and turning into the drive beside the old boarded-up mansion. Heavy, unpruned shrubbery quickly hid him from sight of anybody along the lane and he swung into a quick aggressive stride.

  A hundred odd feet back he turned up the steps of the little paint-peeling cottage on the rear grounds of the place. It was redolent of dust and staleness inside, a veritable mare’s nest of old furniture with yellowed anti-macassars, knick-knacks and jumpled bric-a-brac. Normally Mike Cheek would have raised holy Cain if he’d had to spend a night in such a hole; now he smiled around at it with satisfaction. It couldn’t have been a better layout if he had designed it himself.

  In the kitchen he poured himself a half tumbler of whisky and downed it in a swallow, then poured another dose. Eyeing it he laughed out loud. So the widow had seen him stumble coming up the lane. Soon the party wires of the phone line would be buzzing with the gossip that “Old Mainz” had come home half-drunk again. Which was one hell of a good joke: nobody had ever seen Mike Cheek drunk. They said he had a hollow leg. He could stand the night at a bar pouring them down. The only effect it had was to make his eyes contract to pinpoints, outwardly; inwardly it gave him a brittle, ruthless coldness.

  He took the second slug of rye up to the bathroom and went to work with an electric razor. Coming back downstairs he redonned the shabby topcoat, deliberately selected a size too large to add to his sloppy feeble appearance. Then he went out to the garage, an old barn, at the end of the driveway twenty feet from his cottage. As he piled the starter of the dingy second-hand sedan, registered under the name of “Lester Mainz,” he smiled with satisfaction again.

  AS A ONE-TIME barn, the place had full-sized doors both at back and front. From the rear, under a tunnel of elms, a track led off over the side of the hill and joined with a little-used dirt back-road in a hollow. Some miles beyond town, the dirt road connected with the state highway. All of which meant he could depart unnoticed, particularly at night and return in equal secrecy. All he had to do was leave a couple of lights burning behind his drawn shades and a curious passer-by would take it for granted he was in.

  Now he backed the car out and went down the lane, turning onto the river road. Two miles further on, he stopped and got some gas at the station at the intersection of the State highway. Again he did some bragging about how he was going up to have a showdown with Lambert Hoskins.

  “Okay, Pop,” the attendant kidded him along. “Leave him in one piece, though.” He knew “Old Mainz’ ” tale of woe too. “Say, here’s a tip for you if you’re coming along here at night. That lousy county motor-cop is hanging around waiting to catch drivers jumping the traffic light here after dark. Okay.”

  Cheek crossed the highway and moved up the climbing cobblestone-and-macadam road that led to Hoskins’ country place, whistling as he drove. He had tucked that last bit of information into one of the files of his orderly trap-sharp mind. Everything was going his way.

  The place Lambert Hoskins had purchased up here in the sticks, since retiring from business, was a small rundown estate on the side of a low slope—a good mile-and-a-half from the nearest neighbor. Just before he turned up the ragged grass-grown drive to the fieldstone and clapboard house, Cheek stopped. Lifting off the wig of ragged gray hair, he deposited it in a door pocket. Then he carefully combed his precisely parted sleek brown hair that looked as if it were enameled on, shrugged out of the sleazy topcoat and pulled away the soiled scarf to bare a stiff-bosomed, blue-hued shirt with an expensive flowered necktie. He ran an appreciative hand along his lean smooth jaw, whiffing the aroma of his after-shave lotion.

  Then he drove up to the place. When he got out in his steel-gray, double-breasted suit to skip lightly up the steps, he ha
d become a trim compact man of medium size, sharp and alert. He slapped a pair of pig gloves impatiently against a hand as he waited an answer to the old-fashioned pull-bell. There was a hint of caged strength in his quick decisive movements.

  CHAPTER II

  THE DOOR swung open to reveal the willowy form of Marta Proctor, Hoskins’ young brunette secretary. Cheek gave her a familiar wink, but his voice was impersonal and a little bit harsh when he snapped, “Hoskins in?. . . . Sure, I know he is. But maybe he’s afraid to see me, eh?”

  She raised a carefully plucked eyebrow that gave her gray-blue pupils a slightly Oriental look, but the darkly carmined lips of her pale oval of a face flashed a quick smile. The frigidity of her voice would have fooled any eavesdropper though.

  “Mister Hoskins isn’t in the habit of dodging callers, Mr. Cheek. . . . You may come in.” Leaving him in the high-ceiled wainscoated hall, she went back to the closed door of the library with her unhurried stately stride, disappeared within.

  From the rear Cheek followed the undulations of her body with satisfaction. He always did prefer them long in the thigh like that, and this dame had class in the bargain. She wasn’t any ordinary piece of fluff grabbing at a quick make. She had brains—and poise; and that last meant plenty on a job like this.

  She emerged, closing the library door behind her after clearly remarking, “Mr. Hoskins will see you in a few minutes, Mr. Cheek.” With a flashing look round, she came down the hall to him.

  “That damn buzzard’s going to make me cool my heels, eh. . . . Hello, honey.” He started to swing an arm around her but she evaded him with her supple body, whispering “the housekeeper.” Cheek’s lean face twisted into a weasel-like smile. “The old hag’s practically stone deaf. Come on—”

  “But she might be around, Mike. Why risk anything now?”

  He scowled briefly, then nodded. “You mean you’ve got it? The combination to his safe?”