Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “Hold it,” Kelly shouted. “Don’t go for that wrench or I’ll put a hole through you. I’m from the police.”

  MacDougal slowly released the massive pipe wrench he’d scooped up. He seemed to know what was coming. He looked quite old, with thin narrow shoulders that drooped low in his shabby jacket. He almost wilted when Kelly exposed the uncut gems.

  “So Bergson’s suspicion that you were a thief was right,” Kelly accused.

  “I—I bought them,” MacDougal whined.

  “Oh, you did! Fine! Tell me where.” Kelly’s voice was hard. “And at the same time, tell me what you want with uncut diamonds? You swiped these from gems that Bergson brought home from time to time. There’s no safe in his apartment. He probably had a hiding place which you spotted. When you found out he was wise to your game you killed him.”

  “Killed him?” MacDougal’s shoulders almost merged with his hips. “You don’t think I did that. It was a man named Nixon. The police arrested him . . .”

  “I arrested him,” Kelly rapped, “and let him go a little while ago. Mac, tell me the truth, did you swipe these diamonds?” MacDougal nodded miserably.

  “But I swear I didn’t kill him.”

  Kelly studied the man for a moment. “Listen, Mac, I’m not going to haul you in. Not right away. But, so help me, if you try to leave this building, even to take a walk, you’ll be grabbed before you reach the sidewalk. Now give me a master key to all the apartments in this place.”

  MacDougal silently handed the key to Kelly. A few moments later, the detective was in Bergson’s suite.

  He searched the rooms, inch by inch. He discovered the hiding place where Bergson concealed his jewels when caught with them after it was too late to return to his office. The hiding place was crude but effective. The telephone box, screwed to the wall, could be lifted out and behind it was a small recess. In it, Kelly discovered two velvet boxes, both containing jewelry of considerable value.

  “Well, robbery wasn’t the motive,” he grunted.

  He studied the outside of the window ledge, assuming that someone might have overheard his conversation with Nixon right after the killing. It occurred to him that Nixon had read that strange note out loud. Perhaps it was only a natural impulse on the part of the suspected man, but Kelly was missing nothing now. He telephoned the super and asked who lived in the apartments on either side of Bergson’s.

  “Mrs. Cunningham is on the north side,” MacDougal stated. “She’s about eighty-five years old. On the other side is a man named Logan. John Logan. He travels a lot and isn’t home very much. Been there about six or eight months.”

  Kelly hung up. The old lady certainly had no connection with the crime and a man who was rarely at home probably didn’t even know Bergson. Kelly frowned thoughtfully. He wondered if the walls were thin enough so that words could be heard through them. He called MacDougal again and sent him into the Logan apartment with orders to shout at the top of his voice. Kelly heard nothing.

  An hour later he gave up. There was no apparent means by which anyone could have overheard his conversation with Nixon, much less known about the note. More and more, Kelly was forced to believe that the mysterious caller was telling the truth and yet, his doubts of Nixon’s guilt didn’t diminish.

  Kelly took the fraternity key out of his pocket, dropped it on the floor and nudged it almost under the rug. Then he went down the hall and found Nixon already at home.

  Nixon showed no animosity.

  “I’ll do everything I can to help you,” he promised. “After all, it’s for my own good. I don’t think you were wrong for arresting me. In your place I’d have done the same thing.”

  “Thanks,” Kelly said. “Suppose we go into Bergson’s place and you can reenact exactly what you did before I showed up.”

  “I’ll be very glad to.” Nixon stepped out of his apartment and closed the door. They walked down the hall and entered the room where Bergson had died. Nixon looked at the floor in front of the desk and shuddered.

  “Now,” Kelly sat down behind the desk, “go into your routine.”

  NIXON went to the door, opened it and stepped into the hall. He closed the door part way, then stepped in again, as if he’d just seen the upturned toes of the dead man. He walked to the spot where the body had been found, stared down at it. Then he knelt and did a good act of pretending to grasp the handle of the knife. He moved slowly and deliberately. As he started to arise, Kelly banged the desk with his fist.

  “Why—what’s that?” Nixon cried, startled.

  “Me—outside the door and wanting in. Remember?” Kelly ripped out.

  “Oh. Oh, yes, of course.” Nixon looked relieved.

  Nixon half arose, hesitated a moment and then leaned far down again. When he straightened, his hand dipped into his side coat pocket. He walked very slowly toward the door, reached it and turned around. He raised both hands in an expressive gesture that this was the finish of the act.

  “Good,” Kelly said. “That took four minutes. Maybe you were slower this time, not being excited and all. Let it go. But I would like to see what you picked up from the edge of that rug.”

  “Picked up?” Nixon gasped. “I didn’t pick anything—”

  “Come on,” Kelly chided. “I was watching you like a hawk. You don’t have to feel reluctant, I know it’s a fraternity key. I saw it before. That’s why I asked you in here—to see if you’d try and cop it.”

  Kelly arose and walked over to Nixon. He took the key from his pocket and examined the gold chain that swung across Nixon’s vest. Kelly seemed to study the link to which the key had been attached.

  “Looks to me as if Bergson grabbed that key in trying to fight you off, Nixon.” He said. “You got so flabbergasted that you forgot all about the key until you spotted it peeking at you from under the rug. Bergson dropped it there during your tussle with him, knowing it would convict you. That key is numbered and could be traced to you. How about it?”

  Nixon wrung his hands.

  “I seem to get deeper and deeper,” he whined. “Sergeant, again I say I did not kill I Bergson. The key could have fallen off my chain as I bent over the body. I don’t pretend to know how it got here. I don’t even remember the last time I saw the key. I usually carry it with me, quite automatically. You know how those things are.”

  “Yeah,” Kelly sighed. “Well, it looks like another trip downtown for you, my lad.”

  Nixon nodded. He didn’t appear upset or nervous.

  “I want this whole mess over with as much as you do, because I’m completely innocent.”

  Kelly marveling at Nixon’s control took him back to Headquarters and filed another complaint. Then he informed Captain Donahue of his findings. Donahue was pessimistic.

  “The key means something all right, but what?” He asked. “It only proves Nixon was there and he admits that.”

  “Sure,” Kelly laughed. “Only Nixon didn’t drop that key there. I did. I got it out of his possessions while he was locked up. When he tried to pick up the key and hide it, I knew he was our man.”

  Donahue looked toward the ceiling with a pious glance. “Planted evidence.” He sighed. “What kind of a case can you concoct with that stuff. His lawyer will tear you to bits.”

  Kelly grinned.

  “When I get the real stuff on Nixon, I won’t need the key. Right now, I’m going to look up Bergson’s office staff. It seems to me Bergson wasn’t killed for hate only. There was something else. There usually is when the victim happens to be a jewelry dealer.”

  Kelly located Bergson’s secretary and she agreed to meet him at the office. She was middle-aged, staid and super-efficient.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “Mr. Bergson often carried a fortune in gems with him. I warned him something like this would happen some day, but he was very sure of himself.”

  “What did he take with him the day he was killed?” Kelly asked.

  She studied certain books and cards before she answered that on
e.

  “Mr. Bergson took a string of genuine pearls, worth thirty thousand.” She said after checking her cards. “He was to show them to a Mrs. Leonard at the Plaza. He also had with him a bracelet of diamonds and rubies. Assessed at seventy thousand. That was for a showing to a Mrs. Martin.”

  Kelly promptly phoned both women and learned that they’d had evening appointments with Bergson, but that he had not kept them. They were insistent that they had never seen the jewelry he had promised to bring.

  “Good,” Kelly told the secretary. “Now we have a motive because those rocks are not in Bergson’s apartment. They were what the murderer was after.”

  IT WAS late, Kelly felt tired and there was little he could do. He went home to his neat bungalow where he lived alone. He mixed himself a highball, drank it with relish and scrambled some eggs. Over the eggs and toast, he considered the case from every angle and felt that in arresting Nixon he’d made no error.

  Half an hour later, he was in bed, fast asleep. The voice seemed to come from a dozen places, calling his name over and over again. He responded to what he thought was a dream, by turning and tossing. Finally Kelly’s eyes snapped wide open—and promptly closed again because a powerful light almost blinded him.

  “Don’t reach for a gun, Sergeant.” The voice was tinny. “I’m not going to harm you. I’m right outside your window. All I want to do is talk.”

  Kelly knew where his gun was. He cursed himself for not putting it on the night table as usual. It hung, in its holster, over the back of a chair a dozen feet away.

  “You have arrested Nixon again,” the voice said. “What must I do to convince you he is innocent and I’m guilty?”

  “Turn out that light so I can see you. Then give yourself up,” Kelly snapped.

  “But why should I?” the voice sounded different than when he had heard it over the phone. “You’ll never find out who I am. It’s Nixon I’m worried about. Sergeant, if you don’t let that man go, I shall contact every newspaper in town and spill the whole story to them in detail. I’ll tell them you refuse to accept my story even though you know it must be true.

  “I had to have been in the room before you arrived, to know what was in the note, and to have seen the other things that I told you about.”

  “Did you see Nixon?” Kelly demanded. “Right after the murder?”

  “Of course I did. I managed to reach the service doorway. He was coming along the hall with his head down. He didn’t see or hear me.”

  “It’s a good yarn.” Kelly was growing used to the light. He slowly pushed the blankets down, so he could leap out of bed and go for his gun.

  “There’s only one thing wrong with it.” Kelly continued. “Nixon dropped a fraternity key in that room. He saw it today and tried to get it back.”

  “A fraternity key?” Kelly wondered why the voice was so tinny. “Why, that’s odd. Bergson had a fraternity key on his desk. I remember seeing it. I wondered about it because Bergson never went to college. It must have been Nixon’s. Maybe Bergson picked it up somewhere. At any rate, that key was on the edge of his desk when I killed him. It’s a small, flat gold key with numbers on it.”

  “You’re a genius,” Kelly grunted.

  If that guy had a gun, there was going to be fireworks. Kelly leaped out of bed, streaked to the chair and got his gun free. He fired two shots straight through the open window. All he got for his pains was a raucous laugh. A moment later, a car motor roared to life, then disappeared into the night.

  Kelly raced to the window. A flashlight rested on the sill beside a small loud speaker and a wire trailed out of the window. Kelly hurried out the door, winced as bare feet hit cold pavements, and made his way around the house to the window. He traced the wire to a tiny microphone which the self-confessed murderer had talked into.

  Kelly hefted the mike in the palm of his hand and his eyes narrowed. He hurried back to the house, donned his clothes and drove straight to Bergson’s apartment. He let himself in, started searching again and gave up half an hour later. It was no use. His hunch was all wrong. He examined the radio very carefully. There was no mike planted there, no mysterious wire running off into the wall someplace. Just the regular tubes and the socket wire, nothing else.

  He cursed roundly and wondered if he was a complete fool. On impulse, he stepped into the hall and went to the next door apartment of the traveling man. He let himself in with the super’s key and turned on the lights.

  The apartment was nicely furnished. It was spotless and dustless, indicating that no one had lived there for a long time. He opened several bureau drawers. They were empty. He investigated the kitchen. There wasn’t even a package of spaghetti or a bottle of rye. Nothing at all.

  Kelly bent down and examined the wall board between this room and the one where Bergson had died. There was an electric light socket with a plug in it. The wire from this led to a small end table on which a lamp stood. He tried to turn on this lamp, but it wouldn’t work. He tested the bulb and found it was in good condition. Kelly knelt again and yanked the plug out of its socket. It came out freely, dragging an additional length of wire with it.

  Kelly hurried down to the janitor’s place, after replacing the socket and removing all signs of his intrusion. He knew the answer to the case now.

  MACDOUGAL was awakened only with considerable effort. Kelly told him no one was to enter Bergson’s apartment under any circumstances. There were some new clues. One thing about MacDougal, Kelly was sure of—he’d tell everyone interested in the case all the latest developments.

  In the morning, with Captain Donahue, several detectives, the D.A., Nixon and his attorney, Kelly filled the murder room and sat himself down behind the desk.

  “We have here,” he said, “a man whom I almost apprehended in the very act of murder. Also a nameless voice. Just a voice on a telephone or a microphone. The voice of a man who confessed to the crime for which Nixon is being held. If that man had come forth, the whole thing would be over. He hasn’t. In fact, he refuses to so we have to continue holding Nixon.”

  “I didn’t know anyone confessed to the crime,” Nixon’s attorney shouted. “Now you have to let my client go.”

  “Do I?” Kelly grunted. He arose, walked over and put a hand on the surface of the cabinet radio. Suddenly he bent down.

  “One, two, three, four,” he said. “One, two, three, four. Testing. Testing. How is it coming through this morning, Mr. Danny Clark?”

  “What the devil?” Donahue shouted. “Have you gone bats?”

  “I got smart last night,” Kelly grinned. “Concealed in this radio is a mike disguised as a tube. One of those kind with a metal screen, full of holes, around it. Only it’s a mike, not a tube. The mike wire is cleverly enclosed with the power wire under the same insulation. The power wire seems to be plugged into the wall socket, but it goes through to the next apartment.

  “There the wire separates. One section goes to pick up current. The other to carry any sounds made in this room to some ear phones. Are you listening, Danny Clark?”

  “What’s this Danny Clark stuff?” Donahue’s face was heavy with wonder.

  “I’m talking to Danny Clark, the private ear, right now,” Kelly said. “He’s in the next room listening to everything being said in here. Danny and Nixon are in cahoots. This mike was installed so they could listen in on Bergson and find out when he brought home gems that were worth murder.”

  Donahue and the D.A. stared as Kelly unfolded the almost perfect crime. Nixon’s face was an ashy grey and his shoulders slumped.

  “Bergson had the gems yesterday,” Kelly continued. “Nixon came in to do the dirty work. Bergson knew him, so naturally he didn’t expect anything. But when Nixon went at him, Bergson put up a fight. He flung the bookend at Nixon just before Nixon plunged the knife into his chest.

  “Nixon passed the jewels to Clark and then stayed behind a moment to be certain that Bergson was really dead, and that they hadn’t left any clues. Clark went
into the next apartment. Then I showed up and Nixon knew that he was trapped. He called Clark and told him what to do, then wrote the note and went into his act.

  “It was good, I’ll admit, because I couldn’t figure out how the voice, Danny Clark’s of course, could have known these things.”

  “Then, last night, Danny gave the whole show away. He planted a little speaker on my window sill and talked into a mike. Danny had two reasons for using that speaker system. He was afraid I might plug him and it helped to disguise his voice.”

  “Somebody get Danny Clark,” Donahue yelled.

  “He’s got,” Kelly chuckled. “I planted cops in the hall. Danny can take a dry dive if he wants, but he won’t. And, Danny, are you listening? That system you used at my house was the tip-off—private clicks are great ones for listening systems, so I guessed it was you. It also told me how you’d gotten all that information only Nixon and I knew. I really looked for a mike this time—and I found it. Are you coming out of there, Danny?”

  “I’m out.” Clark spoke from the doorway where he was flanked by two big policemen. “I always said this was a crazy idea. We should have killed you when you found Nixon locked up with the corpse.”

  Nixon gave a wild yell of sudden terror, but he didn’t try to escape. Kelly thought it was because his legs were paralyzed by fear.

  YOU’LL DIE LAUGHING

  William Lawrence Hamling

  When Hank Sayler began to steal plots from his friends in the writing game, they decided just to laugh it off . . . in a deadly sort of fashion!

  CHAPTER I

  I left the elevator on the seventh floor of the Michigan Square building and unconsciously, through long habit, patted the envelope I was carrying under my left arm. Every time I walked down this corridor, the home and nerve center of the Alliance Publishing outfit, I felt as if I were walking the last mile. For at the end of the corridor was a door I knew very well. Behind it wasn’t an electric chair. Just an ordinary swivel chair with a comfortable pad. But the guy who sat in it could give me a shock that either filled my pocketbook or emptied it.