Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  Hobson quit grinning. “I didn’t kill him, I tell you. I went to see him. I saw some guys around a weeping willow tree. They were some of Joe Briggs’ crew and I recognized them. Then I went up to the house and in the side door. Dilweg was already dead on the floor. I got scared, and started to beat it, fast. In the back hall, somebody slugged me. When I woke up, I was on the floor of the closet, my glasses busted and a bump on my head.”

  He showed me a bump on his skull, back of the right ear, the same place I had been slugged by Joe Briggs in Lilli Mason’s place.

  “I opened the closet,” Thick Glasses continued, “and you guys were coming at me. I beat it. You know the rest. That’s the truth, so help me God.”

  “Why’d you run? Your story was just as good then as it is now.”

  “I knew Dilweg was dead. How was I to know you guys hadn’t killed him?”

  “You work for Roberts. Why run from him?”

  “You forget my glasses were broken. I didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t till I saw the pictures in the paper that I knew who it was in Dilweg’s house.” He touched his glasses. “This is an old pair I had around before I got mustered out.”

  “I got to tell Morf, chum. I’m no sleuth for the city. I’m just a private eye.”

  “I haven’t told you everything,” Hobson said.

  “Let your imagination run, bub,” I told him. “Nothing can possibly jolt me now.”

  “When I ran away from Dilweg’s house, I didn’t go far,” Thick Glasses said. “I hid in the timber till dark. Then a tall, skinny guy came out of the house and hid something behind a loose brick in the wall in front of where I was hiding.”

  I grinned. “Bring in some false whiskers and a submarine and you got a new Perils of Pauline.”

  CHAPTER V

  SURPRISE SUSPECT

  Hobson went to the table and opened the drawer and came back with a thin, flat package, wrapped in brown paper.

  “There’s the proof,” he said to me. “Read it.”

  I did. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” I said. “Even money says this stuff was taken from Dilweg’s safe.” I looked at him closely. “Is John Elkins the guy that cached this?”

  “I’ve only seen Elkins’ picture in the paper. The guy who cached the package is the one who was here tonight asking for Mr. Roberts.”

  “Why do you think Mr. Roberts’ life is in danger?”

  “I think Elkins killed Dilweg, and I think Elkins believes that Mr. Roberts knows he did and is trying to prove it. So Elkins wants to put Mr. Roberts out of the way.”

  “Have you told this story to anyone else?” I said.

  “Yes. To Mr. Roberts. That’s why Mr. Roberts refused to see Elkins tonight.”

  “Where’s your boss now?”

  “I don’t know. He left shortly after Elkins was here the first time. I don’t know where he went.”

  “Did Mr. Roberts say anything when you showed him the package that had been taken from Dilweg’s safe and then cached by Elkins?”

  “He said it should be turned over to the police immediately.”

  “I think you’ve got something there,” I said. “We’re forty miles away from Morf. Would you trust me to deliver it as evidence?”

  “I was hoping you’d offer.”

  He handed the package back to me without hesitation.

  “Now,” I said, “maybe you can let me out the side door or something. I don’t want Elkins to be hanging around and slug me in the dark by mistake.”

  Hobson led me downstairs to a concrete-floored basement. It was full of work benches and machinery, and it smelled of leather. There were a half-dozen automobiles in the middle of the big room. The light was dim and I couldn’t see things plainly, and he didn’t offer to turn on more lights. Maybe it was a good idea, if somebody was hanging around outside with murder in his heart when he found the right victim.

  I remembered the article I’d read in the library back home.

  “How many handicapped guys actually live in Handicap Haven?” I asked Hobson.

  “About twenty-five blind men,” he said. “They live in dormitories on the second floor. But there’s about a hundred and twenty-five who work here in the daytime. The blind ones make belts and billfolds and other leathercraft. The deaf and crippled and epileptic make brooms and stuff and polish automobiles.”

  “Got a list of the cars polished here in the last few days?” I asked.

  “Yeah. But only by license numbers. Mr. Roberts always took care of billing the customers. Here’s the book.”

  It was a little book. One of the last entries in it was a car with license number 408-284. Dilweg had had his car polished at his pet project.

  “That was free,” Hobson said. “For other jobs we usually get ten bucks.”

  He let me out the side door of the basement. It was as dark as the inside of the eight-ball and my skin was prickling on the back of my neck. But I acted as brave as I could and walked up the alley to the sidewalk. Then I walked back to the city hall to pick up my borrowed car.

  I knew I had some pretty potent evidence in my pocket that somebody had taken out of Dilweg’s safe, and I had no doubt that the same someone might get pleasure out of sticking a pair of paper shears in my gizzard to get it back.

  But somehow I just couldn’t add up all the angles to the case to make sense. If Elkins had killed his boss I couldn’t figure where the con game on Elkins’ six grand fitted into the picture. I don’t believe in duplex mysteries. I believe that all murders are solved by finding the single thread of motive that is responsible for letting a human out of this world.

  It was nearly one o’clock in the morning before I hit the hay, and I slept like a hammered steer. When I got up, at about eleven bells, I phoned Morf, to tell him about the package Hobson had given me.

  “Which one of your two suspects is gonna fry for killing Dilweg?” I said.

  “A guy named John Elkins,” he said. “Carson Roberts brought in a stooge of his by the name of Blake Hobson. Hobson seen Elkins cache a package that was taken from Dilweg’s safe. And Hobson tells me you took the package. You better bring it down here pronto or I’ll put you in the clink for holding back evidence.”

  “Last night, Genius, you swore you were going to hang the garland of guilt around the necks of Lilli Franner and Joe Briggs. How come you changed your mind?”

  “We never found no six grand no place, did we? And they come up with an alibi and they got witnesses to prove that they was at the Hog Hip eating lunch at the very minute Dilweg was stuck. They’re in the clear. But I’m holding them here, along with Roberts and Hobson. When you bring that cache down here, I’m going out and put the heat on Elkins, and I’m taking the whole kit and kaboodle along with me. I’ll get this thing down in black and white and Elkins will sign his John Henry.”

  Something close to inspiration clicked in my brain.

  “I’ll be down as soon as I shave,” I said. “And I’ll bet the one you put the bracelets on will surprise you.”

  I went down to the city hall and Morf grabbed the cache out of my hand like it was engraved with gold.

  “Put the whole gang in squad cars and bring them along!” he roared at a couple of stooges. He frowned at me. “We don’t need any more help from you.”

  “Give me a break,” I said. “Elkins is a client of mine. I get two hundred bucks if I get his six grand back.”

  “All right. Come on.”

  We all drove out to Dilweg’s mansion in three squad cars piloted by Morf’s stooges. Morf pounded on the front door like he was storming the walls of Jericho. Nobody answered. The house was quiet as the tomb. Elkins didn’t show up.

  No wonder. When we finally got in the joint we found out why. Elkins was on his bedroom floor upstairs. He was flat on his back in some loud-striped pajamas. There was a bullet-hole in his right temple and a .45 automatic in his right hand. He was dead.

  Morf did a lot of strutting around like the hero in the last act of
a melodrama. He looked the body over. He handled the gun with a handkerchief and gave it to one of his stooges. Then he looked around at his audience and spoke like an oracle, and he spat most of his words in my direction.

  “He’s been dead for eight or ten hours. I’d say he shot himself a little after midnight or thereabouts. He probably woke up to the fact that somebody had discovered his cache of the stuff he took out of his boss’ safe and he knew the jig was up. Our whole murder mystery is all washed up. Elkins killed his boss and now he’s bumped himself off.”

  “Why don’t you come out of the kindergarten, Big Shot?” I said. “Elkins didn’t kill himself. A schoolboy ought to know that.”

  Morf got red. “Huh?”

  “That’s a forty-five automatic, bub. If Elkins killed himself, where’s the ejected shell?”

  Morf got still redder and his stooges looked all over the joint for a cartridge case. They couldn’t find it.

  “Somebody bumped Elkins off,” I said. “Somebody that Elkins knew pretty well or he wouldn’t have been in his bedroom in his pajamas. Maybe the ejected shell got stuck some place on the killer. I read about a case once where a murderer got trapped because he stepped on an ejected shell and it stuck in his rubber heel. They hung him.” Then I said, “Bring the herd downstairs, Big Shot, and I’ll name the killer. I had a hunch about the solution this morning. Now I’m sure of it. Too bad I didn’t figure it out last night. I could have saved Elkins’ life and made myself two hundred bucks.”

  “Who are you, to order people around?” Joe Briggs said plenty ugly. “You’re only a private gumshoe, and a punk one at that.”

  Lillie Franner was putting lipstick on her full lips. “That’s telling him, honey,” she drawled.

  Briggs had lost his yen for Lilli. “Shut up!” he snapped.

  “Mr. Starch is doing his best,” Carson Roberts said, in that aristocratic voice of his. “The least we can do is cooperate.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Too bad we all don’t see eye to eye.”

  “Downstairs, punks, and make it snappy!” Morf hollered.

  We all went downstairs to the study and Morf seated everybody. Then he glared at me.

  “All right, get out your ouija board. Who’s the killer?”

  “You’re getting this for free,” I said. “How about letting me do it my way?”

  “Okay, Dick Tracy.”

  “We’ll start with the killer right here in the study,” I said. “He had a fuss with Dilweg. He picked up the paper shears and killed him. Then he figured he couldn’t just walk out of the house without providing some kind of a motive for murder. So he took the papers out of Dilweg’s safe and planted them in Elkins’ room.

  “Then the killer came downstairs, and just managed to get out of sight before Blake Hobson came in the side door. Then he had to give himself time to provide an alibi so he slugged Hobson and put his body in the closet while he made his getaway.”

  Morf got up and paced the floor. “That’s imagination. That ain’t evidence. I’d look silly going into court with that.”

  “The things the killer did here ain’t important,” I said. “It’s the things he did before and after that tripped him up.”

  “Your riddles annoy me. Speak up or shut up.”

  I grinned at Morf and then at Hobson. “Day before yesterday the deaf guys at Handicap Haven polished a four-door sedan. License number Four-o-eight, two-eight-four. They got a record in a book at Handicap Haven.”

  “So what?”

  “That was Dilweg’s car. Yesterday afternoon the killer drove Dilweg’s car through the rain from East St. Louis and put it in the garage downstairs. The guy that Elkins testified to seeing drive in the gate just before Dilweg was killed was not Dilweg but the killer in Dilweg’s car.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “The car’s still downstairs. Go down and sit behind the wheel. The rearview mirror is set for a guy six feet tall. Dilweg was only a little over five feet. He couldn’t have used the rear-view mirror.”

  “How’d the killer get away?” Morf growled. “The boys working on the weeping willow tree didn’t see nobody but Hobson.”

  “Simple,” I said. “Very simple. The day before, he’d left his own car, exactly like Dilweg’s, in the garage downstairs, and drove Dilweg’s to Handicap Haven to have it polished. After he killed Dilweg, and slugged Hobson, he went down to the garage and drove his own car through the tunnel under the house. The boys at the weeping willow tree couldn’t have seen him.”

  “You’re still guessing,” Morf said. “Am I? He drove his car around the block and parked by the iron gate. His car was dry—in spite of the fact that it had stopped raining only when I got off the Noble bus and walked across the street. So his car had to be in a dry place less than a minute before I saw him park it. There isn’t another place within a mile—except the garage downstairs.

  Morf grinned at Carson Roberts, who was fidgeting with his Homburg on a corner of the davenport.

  “He’s put the finger on you, Roberts. What you got to say?”

  “I’m confused,” said Roberts. “I can’t imagine why Mr. Starch would think I would kill Mr. Dilweg. He was a benefactor, not an enemy.”

  “I can fill in the motive, Roberts. Dilweg was a benefactor. Over a period of years he’s given several hundred thousand dollars to you and your Handicap Haven. He thought you were providing living quarters for the handicapped, feeding them, and taking care of them generally. You had them making brooms and leathercraft and working on cars on a commercial basis. You provided living quarters for only twenty-five blind men. The balance of Dilweg’s money you appropriated to yourself. Dilweg found it out, threatened you with exposure—and you killed him.”

  Roberts was still fiddling with his Homburg. “There’s a little matter of a dead man upstairs. Elkins. Why would I kill him?”

  “Elkins lost six grand to Lilli Franner. He figured to get it back from you. Because he was the only man alive that knew it was you and not Dilweg who drove Dilweg’s car yesterday afternoon. He visited you in East St. Louis last night. He wanted to see you and blackmail you. You followed him home and killed him, and made it look like suicide.”

  Robert’s lips for the first time had an ugly twist.

  “You seem to know all the answers. I wonder if you know the answer to this?” His left hand dropped the Homburg and I saw the gun in his right hand. It was an ugly little pea-shooter and I had an idea he could hit what he shot at. It was a .32, but it looked like a cannon because it was aimed at my belt buckle!

  CHAPTER VI

  KILLER IN THE DARK

  Morf didn’t have a rubber hose and his stooges couldn’t help him, so he just stood there with his round eyes popping out and his lower lip trembled so much his teeth rattled.

  Roberts moved the gun from side to side to cover all of us.

  “I’m walking out of here,” he said, in that aristocratic voice. “The first one who comes out that door after me, gets a bullet in his middle.”

  He didn’t sound aristocratic any more. And I had a sneaking idea that it was only his wish for haste that stopped him from putting a slug in my ticker.

  He backed through the door into the hall. Then I could hear his feet pounding on the hardwood floor as he ran down the hall to the north.

  I leaped for the doorway. And an Oriental rug saved my life. My feet went out from under me as a rug skittered on the floor. I went down. And the bullet Roberts had promised smashed into the door jamb and a white splinter of wood tore loose.

  I scrambled up and grabbed a Louis XIV chair. Roberts was tugging at the door that led to the garage downstairs with his left hand, and he snapped a shot at me from the .32 in his right. That slug whistled by me so close I could smell hot lead.

  I heaved the chair forward across the gleaming floor. It skittered crazily, but stayed on course, and slammed toward Roberts. And then the door came open under his frantic tugging and the zooming chair missed him and crashed t
hrough the door opening. I heard it bouncing down the stairway to the garage floor.

  Roberts leaped through the door and his steps boomed as he ran down. I hit the door and jerked it open to utter darkness. I was outlined at the head of the steps. A bullet tore into the padding in the shoulder of my coat and I could I feel the burn of its scratch on my hide.

  I crouched low and pulled the door shut behind me. Utter blackness was all around. I heard Roberts’ muffled curses as he stumbled over the Louis XIV chair. My hands searched the wall in frenzy. They found a switch. I flicked it. Nothing happened.

  Butterflies went berserk in my stomach. I was in a tight spot. A killer was below me in the dark. A guy who had killed twice and had nothing to lose if he killed again. The killer had a gun and knew how to use it. I was unarmed.

  I couldn’t see the killer and I couldn’t even hear him move. He might be anywhere in a thirty-foot square room.

  The killer couldn’t see me, either. But he knew by now that I didn’t have a gun. And he knew that I was on that stairway. He had three bullets left and my skin crawled with fear, expecting hot lead to blast me.

  I couldn’t retreat. The minute I opened the door behind me my body would be outlined against the light from the hall. So I bent forward until my groping hands found the step under me. I lay down like a snake, head first, and let my body slide down the steps. My ears were so finely tuned to danger that I could hear the scrape of my coat buttons on the edge of the steps.

  A bullet roared through the darkness and I heard it smash into the door at the head of the stairs. The flash showed me Roberts’ shadow, standing six feet from the foot of the stairs, his feet fumbling with the wreckage of the Louis XIV chair.

  I squeezed my body tight to the steps. Roberts had two bullets left. Two bullets.

  I squirmed downward. Another bullet crashed. And I heard a sudden low hiss of breath. I knew Roberts had located me by the flash of his gun.

  At that moment the stairway door was jerked open and I heard Morf bellow his head off in fear as Roberts’ last bullet smacked into the door and threw splinters of wood into the detective’s face. Morf turned yellow and jumped back and closed the door.