by Jerry eBooks
He smoked a cigarette and thought about the $50,000. It made pleasant thinking. For two weeks he had lived in breathless fear that the old man would make a deathbed confession and thus enable the law to nullify the will, turn the fortune back to those he’d stolen it from.
He’d been acutely afraid of such a thing happening this morning, when Blaylock had asked him to phone Headquarters for a bodyguard. It could mean only one thing. Blaylock was getting ready to talk and wanted protection against the other men he’d implicate. So Fielding had let the butler off for the day and set his murder scheme in motion. No poisonous drugs, easily traceable to a medical man; he was too clever for that. The scheme was so simple that death would seem a mere accident . . .
DETECTIVE SERGEANT ERNIE ALPERT arrived at two minutes before eleven. He came through the doorway with a certain bulky grace—a heavy-shouldered man in a blue suit and crusher hat. Big and slow-moving and not too bright, Fielding decided, which fit in with his plans very well.
“They probably explained downtown that you’re wanted for guard duty,” he said easily. “But I have an idea Mr. Blaylock may want to give you special instructions. You’d better have a talk with him.”
He led the way upstairs. The old man was still groggy from the ether, which was fine with Fielding. Conversation wasn’t necessary or, for that matter, desirable.
The main thing was that Alpert could see he was alive.
As part of the window dressing, Fielding took the old man’s pulse. It was stronger than yesterday, he noted. Heart cases like this sometimes lingered on for weeks. It was good he’d finally taken action.
He turned to Alpert with pretended concern. “He’s pretty weak, more so than I thought. Maybe we’d better not disturb him.”
Alpert shrugged. “That’s okay. Let him sleep.”
“I’ll see if he’s running a fever,” Fielding said. “Then I’ll join you downstairs.”
“Fine, fine.” Alpert went out into the hall. An instant later, his steps could be heard on the stairs.
Fielding moved swiftly. He threw back the quilt and seized Blaylock by the scruff of his tight-collared linen pajamas. He inserted an index finger beneath the collar and twisted until the cloth cut into Blaylock’s throat like a taut cord.
The old man’s face went beet-red. He opened bulging eyes, closed them again, rallied enough to struggle briefly. For perhaps thirty seconds his aged body was tense with the effort. Then the resistance went suddenly out of him. He wilted, fell back on the pillows.
Fielding maintained the pressure until he was sure death had come. Then he swung the body halfway out of bed and anchored it in that position by hooking the tail of the pajama coat on a corner post of the bed. The effect was quite realistic, as though Blaylock, in trying to lean out of bed to reach the radio, had lost his balance. One could almost see him falling, being brought up short by the snagged pajama coat.
Fielding cut short the appreciation of his handiwork. There was one thing more to be done. Carefully he raised the lid of the radio, put the needle in place on the freshly made record. He lowered the lid, played with the dials on the front of the set. Then he went downstairs.
Detective Alpert was seated on the divan, glancing over the morning paper. “Trouble brewin’,” he said conversationally. “Too many people got a funny idea about Mr. Blaylock. They figure he really knows something about a lot of the crime we’ve had around town. Figure there’s a chance he’s gonna be pressured into sayin’ something before he passes on.”
Fielding sat down in the wing chair, close to the stairway. When the time came, he would have to beat Alpert in the race to the bedroom.
“It’s this Jimmy Lullwood that’s causing the trouble,” he said. “He’s a publicity hound. Building himself up as the man who can goad Mr. Blaylock into talking. Lullwood’s charges are sheer poppycock, of course, but they might put Mr. Blaylock in a bad spot if some thug or other got to believing them. That’s why you’re here. We’ve got killers in this town. Some of them wouldn’t wait to check the facts if they got rattled enough.”
Alpert nodded thoughtfully. “You said a mouthful there, Doc. It’s rotten, the underworld we’ve got. Rats and killers, and all because we’ve got cheap politicians to front for them.”
He looked as if he intended to say more, but the dance music had started drifting downstairs. Fielding felt a thrill of anticipation. The record had been spinning for a minute now, playing through those silent grooves he’d put on it. The effect was perfect, as though Blaylock had just this instant turned on the radio.
“Guess he wants to hear Lullwood’s eleven o’clock broadcast,” Fielding said. The radio was making the familiar garbled sounds of tuning from one station to the other: the male quartet, more music, finally Lullwood’s station. The illusion was uncanny in its realism. Fielding felt a glow of accomplishment.
He handled it rather well when the record ended, he thought. Lullwood’s voice abruptly cut off, as though Blaylock had snapped off the set. The muffled cry followed: “Gus! Help me! Gus!” And then Fielding was sprinting up the stairway, a good dozen yards ahead of the other man.
In the bedroom, he flicked off the radio’s main switch, then struck a shocked attitude near the bed. “Claude! What happened?”
Alpert was beside him, clutching his arm. “Good heavens! Must have fallen—”
FIELDING seemed to break free of his shock. He knelt and disengaged the pajamas from the bedpost, let Blaylock gently down to the carpet. He felt for a pulse, then turned to Alpert with a grief-tautened face. “This is ghastly! Strangled himself! My dearest friend—”
“Steady,” Alpert said. His voice was husky with sympathy. “Must have toppled over when he leaned out and shut off the radio. His pajamas caught—”
Fielding had to work hard to hold down the surge of exultation rising inside him. Beautiful! Every last detail of it! He turned his face from the detective for fear his triumph would show. He forced a tremor into his voice.
“I—I hope you’ll help me look after the details, Sergeant. This has hit me pretty hard. If you’ll call the medical examiner—”
Alpert was gentle. “Shucks, Doc, I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s plain the thing was an accident. Nobody else was in the house, and you and me was downstairs—”
“I know,” Fielding said. “But we’ve already seen how vicious gossip can get around. I’m named in Blaylock’s will after all. There might be talk. I’d rather you called both the M.E. and the homicide squad, just to head off loose talk.”
Downstairs he relaxed in the wing chair while Alpert made the phone calls. He closed his eyes and thought of the way his checkbook would look with that heavy new balance in it. $50,000. Enough to give him all the luxury he could want for the rest of his life. The figure might even be larger, once they got to delving into the real extent of the late Claude Blaylock’s wealth . . .
Alpert came back from the phone. “Okay, Doc. I fixed everything up, even though I still think you’re leaning over backwards. And as for callin’ in the homicide boys, that may turn out to cause trouble in the long run, the way they get things all mixed up. They’re a bunch of dopes, if you ask me.”
“Oh?” said Fielding. He glanced at the detective tolerantly. He felt almost an affection for Alpert, the way the boob had so accommodatingly fallen for his scheme.
“You oughtta heard what they was tryin’ to tell me over the phone.” He paused and scratched his chin. “Hey, Doc, suppose we go up and turn that radio back on for a minute.”
A wave of chilly alarm washed over Fielding. He tensed. Not that there was anything wrong. There couldn’t be anything wrong. The thing had gone too smoothly, all the way. And yet there was that strangely reflective look on Alpert’s face. And there was the queer request he’d made.
Fielding’s voice wasn’t as steady as he wanted it to be. “Why, of course, Sergeant. Whatever you say—”
He swung out of the chair and moved to the stairway ahead of Alpert. That was import
ant, he reminded himself. He’d have to get to the radio ahead of the detective. He’d have to turn the switch from the phonograph to the standard broadcast position. It would be disastrous if Alpert found it turned the wrong way.
He had to use will power to keep from breaking into a trot as he entered the bedroom. He fumbled with the front of the radio, blocking Alpert’s line of vision with his body, and got the change made. He turned on the main switch and waited for the thing to heat up.
His forehead was lightly beaded with sweat as he faced the detective: He tried to sound casual. “Now what was it you wanted to check, Sergeant?”
“Oh, just that crazy idea the boys downtown were tryin’ to put over on me. They had to be wrong, because Mr. Blaylock had his radio tuned in at eleven. He was listening to Jimmy Lullwood. We could hear it all the way downstairs—”
Alpert broke off. Fielding frowned. Abruptly, then, he felt the blood draining from his face. The radio was warm now, and its voice was like the Voice of Doom. He lunged toward the set, but Alpert’s gun was out with dazing suddenness. And the friendly sympathy was gone from his face, too. It was replaced by a hard, pitiless mask of anger.
“You made a record!” he said hoarsely. “You had to, because that’s the only way you could have done it—the only way you could have alibied yourself for Claude Blaylock’s murder!”
Fielding tried to say something, tried to think up a quick answer. There could be none, of course. Not with the way the radio was going on. Stark chilling fear gripped Fielding as he listened to the announcer:
“. . . and so gangdom struck back at the crusading menace that could possibly have badgered a confession out of the dying Claude Blaylock. Jimmy Lullwood was shot and instantly killed as he left the studio after his ten o’clock broadcast this morning . . .
THEY GAVE HIM A BADGE
John Corbett
When Sian Martin came home with a chestful of medals, Irontown gave him a sheriff’s badge to add to his collection. But what good was it, when he had to use it to pin a murder on his girl’s wildling brother?
ALIVE, the girl had been something to look at. In death—with no sound in the room but the heavy breathing of the staring men and the rhythmic pelting of the rain on the roof—her face was ghastly. Her smile had become a leer.
She hung by one of her own stockings. One end of the stocking had been formed into a loop. The other end was fastened to the shower rail. One well-scuffed dancing pump had fallen inside the spotless tub. Its mate, clotted with the mud that was Hunkytown’s only pavement during the rainy season, still clung to one well-turned foot. Her shapely legs were hidden by the sweeping skirt of her cheap evening gown.
His cursory examination completed, Deputy Sheriff Saltzer, a hawk-faced man with predatory eyes, wrote her obit with contempt.
“Just another cheap dance-hall trollop who got tired of being what she was.”
“Then it’s suicide?” a reporter asked.
“It is,” Saltzer told him. He seemed to recall Sheriff Martin’s presence for the first time. “You agree with me, don’t you, Sheriff?”
Stan Martin looked from the dead girl’s muddy pump to the spotless rim of the bathtub. A big blond youth with a square, rugged-featured face and a slight impediment in his speech, he had no illusions about his new job.
Despite all the nice things that Mayor Varney had said, despite the decorations and lieutenant’s bars on his uniform, now packed away in moth balls, the: war hadn’t changed a thing. He was still from on the wrong side of the tracks. He was still Big Polack Joe Martin’s boy. The shiny silver sheriff’s badge handed him at the conclusion of Mayor Varney’s welcome-home address was merely Irontown’s solution of what might have proven to be an embarrassing situation.
As Mai Hunt, the local political boss, had summed it up, “Irontown has a bad enough name as it is. And it would give us another black eye if some nosey city reporter found out that we had allowed one of the war’s most-decorated heroes to return to pumping gas at the White Front Filling Station. What the hell? So the Army made him a lieutenant. He’s still a big dumb Polack. He’ll do as he’s told to do. Let’s elect him Sheriff.”
And they had. They had put his name on the ballot and elected him in absentee. He was Sheriff of the county. But Paul Saltzer still ran Irontown—as the machine wanted it run.
“You agree with me, don’t you, Sheriff?” Saltzer repeated. His tone was thinner this time.
Martin raised his eyes to the dead girl’s face. He had known her well. Her name was Sadie Wolinsky. Her father was a puddler in the same mill in which his father worked. They had gone through high-school together, he and Sadie and Jennifer Helm.
The easiest thing to do was to agree with Saltzer. The machine expected him to. Sadie had never amounted to much. She never would. Hunt had given him to understand that if he played ball he might go far. He had hinted openly that there was no limit to the height a mam with his war record—backed by a powerful political machine—could travel in the reconversion period. It was a tempting picture. In time even the origin of his birth would be forgotten. H: would belong on the “right side of the tracks.” Helm would consider him an acceptable suitor for Jennifer’s hand.
“Well?” Saltzer demanded.
The young sheriff fingered the silver badge in his pocket. The sensible thing to do was to agree. But to stamp an obvious murder as suicide was contrary to the oath of office he had sworn.
“N-no. I don’t agree,” he heard his own voice saying. “That girl was m-murdered.”
The reporters who had started for the door turned back.
“Don’t be a fool, Martin,” Saltzer said sharply.
“Sh-sheriff Martin to you,” Martin said. He controlled the slight speech impediment with an effort. “Look at the rim of that bathtub. She would have had to stand on it to hang herself. If she had, she would have gotten it muddy. It’s as clean as a baby’s c-conscience. Somebody killed that girl and hung her to that rail after she was dead.”
One of the reporters who had known her slightly wanted to know who would have wanted to kill Sadie Wolinsky.
“I d-don’t know,” Martin admitted. “But I d-damn well mean to find out.”
“You’ll be sorry,” Saltzer said.
“T-that’s what they told me at O.C.S.,” young Martin told him grimly.
IF THERE had been any clues to Sadie Wolinsky’s murder on the outside of the cottage, the rain had washed them down the drain. Saltzer, or one of his stooges, acting in the interest of some unknown party, had done as much on the inside. No one had seen the killer enter. No one had seen him leave. There was nothing to point to murder with the exception of the one mistake that the killer had made. He had failed to muddy the clean rim of a bathtub. A little thing but Martin intended it to send the murderer to the chair.
In another section of Hunkytown, he parked his car in front of the Wolinsky home and waded the mud to the porch. The dead girl’s parents received the news in stolid silence. Her father was the first to speak. They had expected something like this to happen since Sadie had left home some eight months before. No. He knew of no one special man with whom she had kept company. He spat his contempt. From what he had heard there had been many men. It was well known in the district that she sang in the Blue Lantern Cafe and also danced with those of the patrons who desired it.
“She was a bad one,” her father summed her up.
Back in his car, Martin sat staring across the tracks at the blaze of vari-colored neon lights that was Irontown’s main business section. It was a wide-open town—always had been. The cafes and bars and gambling rooms ran twenty-four hours a day the better to entice the millworkers money out of their pockets. They could eat and drink and spend in the cafes and bars and stores. Their daughters could become hostesses, waitresses, and clerks. A few of the wiser, prettier mill girls married onto the right side of the tracks. But there, except for a favored few, the temperature of the melting pot cooled abruptly.
&n
bsp; By weight of his military record he had become one of the favored. Perhaps he was making a mistake. He still could drop this thing. He could tell Saltzer that he had been mistaken, that it had been suicide. Girls like Sadie were better off dead. Dozens of them died, one way or another, every night. What difference did it make if she had taken her own life or not?
He allowed his eyes to travel on up the street to where the big Helm mansion stood out boldly on a hilltop overlooking the leaping flames of the mills that had founded the fabulous Helm fortune.
Mai Hunt and the machine had made him sheriff. Hunt and the machine could break him. If he attempted to buck them, they would. And for some reason of their own they wanted Sadie’s death to pass as a suicide.
He considered his own future. The infantry had taught him little except how to fight. If they took his sheriff’s badge away it would mean going back to an unskilled laborer’s job. He would never marry Jennifer. The exchange of high school class rings, a few unsatisfying kisses, and several bundles of much-read letters would be all that there would ever be to the brief war-time romance between the mill owner’s daughter and the son of Big Polack Joe Martin. Jennifer had been cool since his return. She had pleaded for time to know him better.
Martin smiled wryly into the rain. The loss of his sheriff’s badge would end it. It was all very well to say that men were created free and equal. But life was merely the old Army game. If rank had its privileges, it also had its responsibilities. And a laborer in the Helm mill could no more hope to marry Jennifer than—
He broke off his reflections sharply. “T-to hell with that kind of thinking,” he swore. I s-swore an oath to up-h-hold the law to the b-best of my ability. If I lose Jennifer, I lose her.”
He ground his car into gear, then slipped his foot from the clutch and threw himself sideways on the seat as a bright blob of orange flame spurted from the opposite curb. Quickly as he had moved, the bullet grazed his cheek. Cursing softly, he wriggled from the far door of the car, his own gun in his hand.
