Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “No. I was sitting on the corner. Bob was beside me. Uncle was in the big easy chair beside the reading desk.”

  “You touch him, Blodger, or shake hands with him?” O’Hara asked.

  “No, sir. Are you intimating I killed him? And I wasn’t out of the library, so I couldn’t have killed Denshaw.”

  “Very cleverly put,” O’Hara said.

  O’Hara turned to Dr. Stampf. “Since this tragedy has occurred, I suppose [the will] hasn’t been changed, and you’ll have the chance to go ahead with the sanitarium.”

  “I presume so,” Stampf replied. “It will be a monument to Mr. Fargall.”

  “How long ago was it you would not marry Miss Fargall, and he threatened to change the will and name another doctor?”

  “Three days ago, I believe.”

  O’Hara got up and killed time pacing around the room. He was waiting for Rassman, who had gone to the Zeller apartment a block away. And finally Rassman returned and beckoned him, and O’Hara went into the hall. He listened to what Rassman had to say, then went back into the living room with Rassman beside him.

  Rassman whispered to the Squad man, Carlson, as he entered, and Carlson drifted across the room and unobtrusively took up his position. O’Hara took the center of the floor.

  “I think we have this thing solved,” O’Hara said. “One of you now in this room killed both Mr. Fargall and Fred Denshaw.”

  Penny and Bob Blodger gave gasps of horror. Stampf brought out his cigarette case, carefully selected a cigarette, lit it with an expensive lighter, and returned lighter and case to his pockets. He fumbled for an instant in his waistcoat pocket, then settled back to smoke and listen.

  “By the way, Dr. Stampf, you didn’t see Denshaw this evening?” O’Hara asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Nor see the Santa Claus, whoever played the part?”

  “I did not.”

  “When did you see the costume last?”

  “Why, last Christmas Eve. I was a guest here at the usual party, and Denshaw played Santa Claus. I’ll always remember it, because Denshaw got nervous and knocked over a table and smashed a vase, and was apologizing all over the place.”

  “I remember that, too,” said Penny.

  “Dr. Stampf, you travel in fashionable society,” O’Hara said, “and I presume you wear evening clothes a great deal?”

  “Almost every evening,” Stampf replied, smiling slightly. He also had a look of slight bewilderment in his face.

  “You don’t have to put up your evening clothes in moth balls then,” O’Hara said, smiling also.

  LIEUTENANT O’HARA puffed at his cigarette a few times, then extinguished it carefully in an ash tray and straightened.

  “Well, I think we can consider this case closed, which will give me a chance to spend Christmas at home with my family,” he said. “Dr. Stampf, you went to Zeller’s apartment a little before eight, as you said. Sergeant Rassman checked on that. The nurse had returned when Rassman was over at the apartment a few minutes ago. She says you came and she left immediately at about a quarter of eight.”

  “That’s correct,” Stampf replied. “I talked with Zeller for a time, and finally gave him a sedative, then came here.”

  “Isn’t it true, Doctor, that you gave him a sedative at once? He became unconscious immediately, and gave you an opportunity to leave, and Zeller couldn’t tell afterward what time you had left. His apartment on the second floor is served with a private automatic elevator, and nobody saw you leave. You hurried back here, entered the house and accosted Denshaw in his room as he was preparing to put on the Santa Claus costume.”

  “I beg your pardon!” Dr. Stampf expressed indignation.

  “Wait until I am done,” O’Hara requested. “You held Denshaw, who was not a strong man, jabbed him with a needle and killed him. You put on the costume and hurried to the library and played Santa Claus. You killed Mr. Fargall. Then you went back to Denshaw’s room, took off the costume, hurried out of [the] house and around to the front door and rang the bell, getting here about the time Mr. Fargall dropped dead.”

  “Are you daring to intimate—”

  “I’m not intimating. I’m accusing you, and arresting you, for the murders of Mr. Fargall and Fred Denshaw. And knowing that the undertakers might discover the cause of death, you couldn’t certify to a natural death from a heart attack, so you called the police. You probably thought Miss Fargall or Mr. Blodger would be suspected and blamed. You believed your alibi perfect.”

  “Why should I—have killed those two men?”

  “To get the fat job of handling a fortune for a clinic and sanitarium, make yourself an international reputation possibly, and have plenty of money to marry your old college sweetheart. You knew Fargall would change his will.”

  “Preposterous!”

  “Oh, let’s end it!” O’Hara snapped. “The Santa Claus costume reeked with moth balls. Denshaw’s clothes did not, so he didn’t have the costume on over them. But your evening clothes, which you use continually and which are never packed away in moth balls, do. You put on that costume and played Santa Claus tonight and killed Fargall . . . Watch him, Carlson!”

  O’Hara barked the last words at his Squad man. Dr. Stampf had lifted his left hand and taken the cigarette from his mouth. Then his right hand went up swiftly and slipped something between his lips. His teeth crunched a capsule.

  “This will make three of us,” Stampf said. “You guessed it right, Lieutenant O’Hara.”

  His head jerked up, he gasped, his eyes rolled, and he would have toppled from the chair if Carlson had not held the body back.

  “I didn’t even have time to tell him how he left his tracks plain in the snow,” O’Hara said.

  MERRY CHRISTMAS, COPPER!

  Johnston McCulley

  It was Christmas Eve and all was cheer and gayety, but in a dark alley along Patrolman Asher’s beat lurked grim murder!

  AS he had done every Christmas Eve for several years, Patrolman Ben Asher stopped on the corner where the Salvation Army man in a Santa Claus costume rang his bell as he stood beside the contribution pot on its tripod. Asher dropped a coin into the pot.

  “Merry Christmas!” he said.

  “Merry Christmas to you, Officer!” the Salvation Army man responded.

  Patrolman Ben Asher walked on. Christmas spirit seemed to be everywhere. The little shops in this side street in a poorer section of the city were thronged with late shoppers. A spit of snow was in the air, but the cold wind had died down. It would be a pleasant Christmas Eve, Asher thought.

  Generally, the Christmastide gave him a feeling of lonesomeness and made him gloomy. He was forty-eight now, and had been a police officer since the age of twenty-two. The death of his childless wife ten years before had stricken him and killed his ambition.

  He lived alone in a couple of comfortable rooms. He was a faithful member of the force, content to do his daily duties, not seeking advancement. He was quiet, capable, and the precinct captain wished he had more like him.

  For eight years, he had had the night beat in this section. He knew almost everybody, and they knew him. He knew boys and girls starting on the wayward path and had checked many of them in time. He knew the industrious men of families, the small business men, the no-goods who hung around the pool halls and were potential criminals. And he knew the rascals, of whom there were several.

  And they all knew Patrolman Ben Asher. They called him “copper,” some in derision and some without affront. Little children ran to him when they smashed a finger, and mothers asked him to look up kids who should be home. Those on the ragged edge of the Law looked at him askance, knowing he was a man who did his duty at all times.

  As he strolled along the street toward the report box two squares down, Asher acknowledged salutations and exchanged “Merry Christmas!” with scores. The feeling of lonesomeness began leaving him. He hoped it would be a quiet night.

  THE only trouble Asher expec
ted would be in Tony Parson’s place. Tony, a middle-aged man with a squint in one eye, was an unsavory character who ran a cafe on a corner. Shady characters were made welcome in Tony’s place, which had half a dozen exits.

  Tony was after every dollar he could get. He tolerated racketeers, policy agents; racetrack touts, and had a bad habit of forgetting the legal closing hour. Often, men were found in the alley behind Tony’s place, stretched unconscious, their pockets inside out, and the bitter scent of chloral hydrate on their breath.

  Asher crossed a street and began passing along a row of dingy buildings where cheap shops were on the ground floor and cheap living quarters above and in the basements. The happy passing crowd jostled him, but he did not protest.

  “Officer Asher!” a woman called.

  He raised his head and saw Mrs. Fergus standing at the bottom of a flight of steps beckoning him. Beside her was a young girl.

  Asher waved at them and started making his way through the crowd to get to them. He had known Mrs. Fergus for many years. Fifteen years before, his testimony had sent her husband to prison for five years, and he knew the struggle she had made to rear a baby boy, who had turned out to be a young scamp. She leased part of a floor in this building, renting rooms to transient lodgers.

  “I was waitin’ for you to pass, Officer Asher,” Mrs. Fergus told him when he finally reached her side. “ ‘Tis a Christmas gift I have for you.” She extended a small package tied with a bit of soiled ribbon. “ ‘Tisn’t much, but the right spirit is behind it.”

  “I’m sure of that, Mrs. Fergus,” Asher replied. “I’ll put it in my locker with the others, and admire it when I get off post.”

  “ ‘Tis a lot of Christmas gifts you get, I’m thinkin’, a popular officer like you.”

  “I’m none too popular with some,” Asher said, smiling as he thought of Tony Parsons and his friends.

  “ ‘Tis about my boy Eddie I’d say a word, He’s hangin’ around Parsons’ place again, I’m sure. And Mary here—you know Mary Timmons, of course—she’s worrying about him, too. Eddie is only nineteen, and I’m afraid he’s a lot like his father, my Jim, rest his soul! He’s wild and wayward. I’m hopin’ and prayin’ they call him for the Army soon, for ‘twill make a proper man of him.”

  “I’m sure it will,” Asher agreed.

  “Him and Mary here are in love. I’m hopin’ that may be the salvation of him, too. They’re young yet, but by the time he comes back from the Army they’ll be old enough to marry and settle down.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him, Mrs. Fergus,” Asher said.

  He touched his cap and went on down the street.

  Beside Parsons’ cafe was a bootblack stand and tobacco store, just a hole in the wall, where Asher had a private locker. He kept his rain clothes there in changeable weather, and put his lunch bucket there each evening, for he liked to fix his own lunch at home and eat it at a little restaurant where he bought coffee.

  Each year on Christmas Eve, as he received presents from people on his beat, Asher put them in the locker. The place was closed at night, but he had a key to the door and one for the locker inside. He stopped there now, unlocked the door and the locker and tucked Mrs. Fergus’ present in, with the others. He had already gathered quite a few.

  When he left, he locked the door behind him and sauntered toward the corner.

  “Hello, Copper!” somebody said.

  He saw Eddie Fergus in the shadows.

  “Hello, Eddie,” Asher greeted. “I was talkin’ to your mother and Miss Mary Timmons a few minutes ago. It’s a fine girl I you’ve got yourself.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Eddie said.

  “Your mother was sayin’ you might be called for the Army any day.”

  “That’s right. My number’ll be coming up, but I don’t care. I want to get a crack at them Japs. How I hate ’em when I think of Pearl Harbor! Why, why—I’ve hated ’em even more than I’ve hated coppers!”

  “So you hate coppers, Eddie?”

  “My dad did time, didn’t he? Oh, I know he had it comin’, accordin’ to the laws. They caught him and others crackin’ a crib. They put him away, and my mother almost starved and had me to raise. A devil of a life for her! You were one of the coppers, Asher! Your testimony pinned the thing on him! And when he got out, he was sick, and soon died.”

  “I know all that, Eddie,” Asher said softly. “That’s just a slice of life.”

  “And everybody thought I’d be like him ‘cause I was a con’s son. Every crook in town was ready to take me under his wing.”

  “You don’t have to throw in with crooks because your father made a mistake,” Asher told him. “Be smart, Eddie. You can’t beat the Law and the cops.”

  EDDIE nodded, thoughtfully.

  “How I’ve hated you for years!” he said. “Every time I saw you, I said to myself, ‘There’s the copper who put my old man in prison!’ But I learned somethin’ today. Mom told me.”

  “Your mother told you what?”

  “How you helped her after you sent my Dad to the pen. How you often slipped her a couple of bucks out of your pay when she was hungry. How you helped her get the lease, and sent her roomers, and saw that they were the right kind and behaved in her place. It made me think different.”

  “I felt sorry for her, Eddie, and you were only a baby. Your mother and you shouldn’t suffer for what your father had done, I thought.”

  “So you needn’t worry about me, Copper,” Eddie said. “I’m goin’ straight. I was bein’ educated, all right, by experts. I can pick locks, and know a lot of crooked tricks.”

  “I’m glad you’re going straight, Eddie.”

  “I’m goin’ in the Army and get in this scrap. Then I’m comin’ home, if I ain’t hurt, and marry Mary Timmons and get me a job and take care of her and Mom. I’m startin’ decent tonight, Copper, on Christmas Eve. And I’m startin’ by giving you a little tip. I’m goin’ to play stool pigeon to show you I mean what I’m sayin’.

  “What’s all this, Eddie?”

  “Jake Harbin and Louie Monds and their gang are in the neighborhood. They’ve got their eyes on the second-floor loft at number two-ten on the street below. Bales of prewar silk are stored there, Copper. Heavy stuff, worth plenty, the kind of stuff the Jake Harbin gang always goes after. Nothin’ cheap about them.”

  “I know,” Asher said.

  “Christmas Eve, say about an hour from now, when everybody’s hustlin’ around and got their minds on tomorrow and coppers are careless—it’d be a good time for ’em, huh? That’s just a tip, Copper, for what you did for my Mom and me when I was a little kid. And I’m going straight.”

  “Good boy, Eddie! I’ll help you all the way. Thanks for the tip.”

  “They’ll have a truck in the dark alley behind the loft buildin’. They’ll probably fix the watchman somehow. I feel like a heel tellin’ you this, ‘cause I picked it up in Tony’s.”

  “It’s a fine way to start on the right path, Eddie, and that doesn’t make you a heel. Jake Harbin, Louie Monds and their gang—they’ve killed men, Eddie, though we’ve never pinned it on ’em. Defenseless men, Eddie—like old night watchmen.”

  “Keep your eyes open, Copper. Phone the tip in and keep out of it yourself and pound your beat.”

  Before Asher could reply to that, Eddie Fergus had slipped into the passing crowd and was gone.

  Thoughtfully, Asher walked on toward the corner and the front entrance of Tony Parsons’ cafe. He didn’t know exactly how to take Eddie, though the boy had seemed sincere enough. In that neighborhood, a policeman was always wary of traps.

  “Hello, Copper.”

  This time, it was Tony Parsons who stopped Asher, and that was almost enough of a surprise to be a shock. Tony generally passed him voicelessly with a dark scowl.

  “What’s on your mind?” Asher asked.

  “Copper, you’ve caused me a lot of trouble,” Tony said. “I’ll admit, though, that you’ve always been fair. Neve
r jumped me ‘less I had the jump comin’.”

  “Thanks for that much,” Asher said. “I never bother any man unless he’s breakin’ the law.”

  “I’ve been pinched so many times that the judge don’t think court’s open ‘less I’m waitin’ to make a plea. But this is Christmas time, Copper. Things always seem different Christmas. I got to thinkin’ about you today when I was buyin’ presents for some of the boys. It’d be a decent thing, I thought, to buy one for you. After all, I tells myself, a man’s got to make his livin’, even if it’s as a cop. That’s his job, same as runnin’ a cafe is mine. Here, Copper, and Merry Christmas!”

  Tony Parsons offered a package, and Asher took it.

  “Thanks, Tony, if you really mean it,” Asher said. “But understand, takin’ a present from you doesn’t put me under obligations.”

  “Sure not, Copper! Just a present from a friend at Christmas time. Tuck it in your locker with the rest. It’s just somethin’ you can use, and if the size ain’t right, let me know and I’ll have it changed.”

  Tony grinned, waved his hand and hurried into his cafe.

  Asher felt of the small package. He knew it was a box, and it seemed to be a box of socks or neckties. On it was a card which read: To Patrolman Asher from Tony Parsons, Merry Christmas.

  ASHER turned back to unlock the door of the bootblack stand and put the package in his locker. When he emerged and locked the door again, he was wondering about the events of the past few minutes.

  Eddie Fergus had promised to make a man of himself, and Tony Parsons was giving Christmas presents to a policeman. That made the world look unside down.

  Asher considered seriously the tip Eddie Fergus had given him. It might be an honest tip, or it might be a hoax, designed to get Asher into a trap. He had always felt that Eddie hated him for sending his father to prison.

  He didn’t want to make a fool of himself by telephoning the tip to Headquarters and having the robbery detail rush out on Christmas Eve and find it a hoax. They’d scorch him for a thing like that. Nor did he want to make a fool of himself by ignoring the tip and then finding in the morning that the Jake Harbin gang had lifted a truckload of expensive silks.